The Mouvement Réformateur chose to invite Roland Duchâtelet as a distinguished guest from the industrial sector, giving the floor to an entrepreneur who, for more than 35 years, has experienced globalisation, tax competition and the energy transition from the heart of the technology industry, notably as a director of Melexis and XFAB, two leading listed Belgian companies. Listening to him is not just about commenting on economic news, but about understanding, with someone on the ground, what Belgium must fix if it wants to remain a country where it is good to produce, invest and innovate.
Roland Duchâtelet first thanked our party, the Mouvement Réformateur, for giving a central place to industrialists, regretting that this is too rare in political debate, whereas “it is, after all, the industrial world that generates collective wellbeing”. He recalled how many Belgian companies have become global players: Anheuser-Busch InBev, Umicore, and of course Melexis, two-thirds of whose turnover is now generated in Asia, proof that a Belgian company can conquer distant markets if the framework allows it to grow. For Roland Duchâtelet, this internationalisation is not a luxury but a condition for survival in a market that has expanded to nearly 5 billion consumers since the fall of the Berlin Wall.
Returning to this pivotal year of 1989, Roland Duchâtelet showed how, within a few decades, the capitalist world moved from a limited club (the United States, Western Europe, Japan, South Korea) to a truly global economy, including Russia, China, India and many other countries. This openness created immense opportunities, but also fierce competition. It was in this context that the great waves of offshoring took place: not only because wages were lower in the East or in Asia, but above all because taxes on labour were much lower there than in Belgium. For Roland Duchâtelet, the Belgian state at the time mismanaged its tax policy by overburdening labour, effectively pushing companies to do the maths and relocate part of their production in order to remain competitive.
Roland Duchâtelet then placed Belgium's industrial trajectory in a longer historical perspective, recalling that our country was one of the very first hearths of the industrial revolution after the United Kingdom, thanks to its geographical and mineralogical assets, particularly in Wallonia. Coal, steel, iron and steel industry: Belgium was a major supplier, even to the Russian railways in the early 20th century. He also recalled, going back to Napoleon, how much the situation has changed in 200 years: at the time, there were no structured public budgets, no public debt comparable to today's, to the point that Napoleon had to sell Louisiana for lack of modern financial instruments. This perspective allows him to denounce a widespread illusion: many citizens think the world has always been as it is today, and above all that it will remain identical in 50 years, as if the great technological, economic and geopolitical shifts belonged to the past.
At the heart of his speech, Roland Duchâtelet spoke at length about social security, born after the Second World War, which he describes as a historically successful alliance between workers, entrepreneurs and policymakers to create lasting economic and social wellbeing. He notes, however, that the system has changed profoundly: whereas public pensions paid by the state were almost non-existent in the 1950s, they now concern a considerable share of the population, with welfare recipients now representing nearly 39% compared to 2% in 1953. As an entrepreneur, Roland Duchâtelet asks the awkward question: is this model still financially sustainable in the long term in a country where the productive base is shrinking and where groups like his now employ only 1,500 people in Belgium out of a total of 8,000 employees worldwide?
On the climate transition, Roland Duchâtelet is both committed and clear-eyed. He recalls that Europe has been at the forefront of reducing emissions, investing massively in renewable energy and decarbonisation, something he has done himself in his own companies by installing solar panels and reducing their carbon footprint. But he stresses that this European effort comes at a cost: energy today is about twice as cheap in China and three times as cheap in the United States as in Europe, which directly harms the competitiveness of European industry, particularly energy-intensive sites. Combined with higher transport costs, this creates a structural handicap that policymakers must have the courage to face.
Roland Duchâtelet also highlighted another distortion: the explosion of employment in certain public sectors without apparent productivity gains, particularly in education. He notes that the number of jobs in public education rose from around 83,000 in 1953 to more than 417,000 today, while in industry employment has fallen sharply for much higher output thanks to productivity gains. His deliberately provocative question is simple: “Where is the productivity in education?” This observation leads him to call for public services to be managed in a way inspired by entrepreneurs: looking at the figures, measuring efficiency, and taking decisions when the accounts are in the red.
Speaking about the role of public officials, Roland Duchâtelet observes that “today we see a renewal,” with ministers who treat the service they lead as if it were their own company, with an increased sense of responsibility and rigour. It is precisely this culture, focused on results, priorities and sustainability, that he calls for across all public action, in Belgium as in Europe.
He concluded by thanking the MR for the invitation and wishing the congress a successful continuation, leaving behind a clear message: if Belgium wants to remain an industrial, technological and prosperous country, it must overhaul its taxation of labour, guarantee competitive energy and manage its public services with the same discipline as businesses.