In Namur, MR President Georges-Louis Bouchez began with a more personal moment: Cécile Neven's birthday, before returning to what underpins the liberal project: freedom, here and everywhere in the world.
The MR President began by paying tribute to the women and men fighting today in Iran for their dignity, their life choices, their opinions and their freedom of conscience, recalling that what seems “natural” to us in a liberal democracy comes at a price and is never permanently guaranteed. He called on activists to support these struggles, including through simple gestures such as sharing information on social media, and denounced the lack of media coverage given to these battles, which, nonetheless, speak to us all as well.
Building on this, he stressed the need for the European Union to regain genuine sovereignty: military, energy, industrial and technological. He recalled the MR's commitment to continuing nuclear power, not as a political squabble, but as a choice of sovereignty and security of supply, and criticised a Europe that sometimes prefers moral posturing to “the harshness of reality”.
On the domestic front, Georges-Louis Bouchez has stood firmly behind the ongoing reforms, in particular the two-year limit on unemployment benefits, which he presents as a cultural revolution aimed at putting work back at the heart of society and turning the page on lifelong unemployment and its social damage. He has placed this reform within the wider challenge of controlling debt and ensuring fairness between generations, pointing out that every child today is born with a debt of several tens of thousands of euros, and that continuing to live on credit simply leaves the bill for younger generations to pay.
He then detailed the twofold requirement he stands for: reviving growth, notably through investment in artificial intelligence and reindustrialisation, and cutting public spending by streamlining levels of power, structures and political mandates. In the same spirit, he denounced the tax privileges enjoyed by health insurance funds and argued that they should be subject to the same rules as other players, so that these resources can be used to lower taxes for people entering the labour market.
Finally, Georges-Louis Bouchez reaffirmed the priority given to security and a firm but fair migration policy, as well as his intention to make the conditions for accessing Belgian nationality more stringent, in the name of respect for the country and equal rules for all. He concluded by inviting activists not to apologise for being liberals, to own the reforms undertaken on the ground, and to approach 2026 with happiness, courage and pride.
Discover his full speech below
Good evening, good evening everyone, thank you for being here, thank you for the balloon, which I'll be taking home to my son, as it happens, because today is Cécile's birthday, and I wish her a happy birthday. I'm looking for her… she's just over there, at the end. Happy birthday! And it's the day after my son's birthday, so it's an excellent time to have a birthday. Thank you for the balloon. Ladies and gentlemen, it's truly a pleasure to be with you, and especially in this venue, because Cécile, if you want to carry on celebrating your birthday, there's the disco ball, which is, after all, a fixture of every party in Wallonia, so don't hesitate if we can keep things going a little longer. I'm delighted to be with you, as I was saying, because, as previous speakers have pointed out, we're in a period where we're implementing reforms, important reforms, reforms our political movement has called for for many years. But before going any further, I wanted to come back to a fundamental question: freedom. Freedom for us, of course, but also freedom for every man and woman across the world. That's why I wanted to begin this speech by paying tribute to the women and men who, in Iran today, are fighting for our liberal model, for the right to debate, for the right to make life choices, religious choices, choices of opinion. And true courage is exactly that: the courage shown in that photo where we see a man standing in front of the regime's motorbike riders, ready to sacrifice his life for what seems to us so natural. Living in a liberal democracy seems so ordinary to us, so taken for granted. Well, these struggles across the world must remind us that these freedoms are without doubt our most precious possessions, and that we must constantly defend them. But if we want to defend them with conviction, we must defend them for everyone. The liberal project, by definition, is universal. You cannot want freedom for yourself while ignoring that of others. So, ladies and gentlemen, I really ask you to support this fight, to support all the women and men who, across the world, are fighting for their freedom. Sometimes it can be done very simply, just with a message on social media, by sharing information, by spreading it. But in any case, I can tell you that I remain deeply struck by the fact that, in our country, the media cover such events so little, because it matters to them, but it also matters to each and every one of us. So if we're sincere in defending these freedoms, the European Union must be far more focused on preserving its sovereignty. Because the Union will have no capacity to defend its values if it doesn't fully commit to sovereignty. In recent years, the European Union has too often preferred the comfort of posturing to the harshness of reality. Because yes, it's very easy to condemn the words of a head of state. It's very easy to say you're worried about a situation. It's far harder to guarantee military autonomy, even if it's not popular. It's far harder to guarantee industrial autonomy, even if that, too, doesn't please everyone. It's far harder to guarantee energy autonomy. And it wasn't by accident that the Mouvement Réformateur, with various members, starting with your federation president David Clarinval, committed to the continuation of nuclear power, a commitment that was carried through by Mathieu Michel. Through this debate, we weren't engaged in some political quarrel, as some tried to suggest. On the contrary, we were committed to the sovereignty and future of our country. Because it's not possible to lecture the whole world when you're dependent on China for industry, on the Arab world and Russia for energy, and on the United States for your security. So yes, we will be truly sincere in defending our values when we show courage in our political choices, even though, for many years, people wanted to make our fellow citizens believe we could live without industry, that we could live without energy or, at least, with energy that simply falls from the sky, that we could also live without needing to invest in our armed forces. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is true political courage. Yes, we must buy military equipment. Yes, we must reindustrialise Europe. Yes, we must equip ourselves in terms of energy. And today, unfortunately, the political debate doesn't rise to the occasion. We spend hours in Parliament debating whether the price of chips will go up by 17 or 12 cents. Meanwhile, the real issues aren't being addressed. And if they aren't addressed and taken in hand, in a few years we won't be talking about chips any more, nor about kayaking trips. Because both our economic well-being will be under threat and our political capacity to guarantee our fellow citizens' well-being will be reduced to nothing. So if we want to move forward, we must carry out reforms. And it's the Mouvement Réformateur that carries these reforms. There are many such reforms. We've reinvested in defence, we're committed to domestic security. There's one in particular that's very emblematic: limiting unemployment benefits to two years, championed by David Clarinval. This limitation was presented to us as a great disaster for our fellow citizens. But let me turn the question back to you: has lifelong unemployment ever fostered well-being? If you think lifelong unemployment fosters well-being, I invite you to go to certain neighbourhoods in the Charleroi, Liège or Mons area, where I'm from, and see what inactivity, sometimes across several generations, has created in terms of social decline, abandoned neighbourhoods, and abandoned people too. So no, ladies and gentlemen, lifelong unemployment was not a solution. Even Jean-Luc Mélenchon, in France, doesn't defend that idea. Solidarity, ladies and gentlemen, must run both ways. Of course the state must stand by you when life deals you a hard blow. But you must contribute to the common good when you have the capacity to do so. That's why limiting unemployment benefits over time is much more than a budgetary measure. It's a genuine cultural revolution. It's a revolution that brings the idea that everyone will be able to contribute according to their abilities. Above all, it's a strong message, a liberal message. The message at the heart of our campaign was that work returns to the centre of society. Now, there have been many demonstrations. And all these demonstrations, all this contestation, stir up unease, sometimes even within our own ranks. We doubt. But I was reassured over the holidays, because I read an interview with the baker from Charleroi. During the debates, the baker from Charleroi was explaining to the butcher from Mons that in fact there were no unemployed people, that they didn't exist, that it was populism. And yet, when I read Paul Magnette's statements, for those who hadn't caught the reference, the butcher from Mons, I think that one was more obvious, I read the press, and what did I find? I discovered that Paul Magnette stated that the time-limited unemployment benefit would not be reversed. So why is he demonstrating? Why is he complaining? We did what he and his cronies never had the courage to do. But make no mistake, ladies and gentlemen: they can demonstrate, they can shout, they can try to disrupt us, but they will change nothing about the reforms we've put in place. Nothing, in any area. For one very simple reason: these reforms are essential for the future of our country. They are essential if we want Belgium to simply return to the European average. For Belgium to matter again in the debate. For Belgium, above all, to give our children a future. Because yes, ladies and gentlemen, there are two ways of doing politics. Either you're preoccupied with the next elections, or you're preoccupied with the next generations. And today, I can tell you one thing: what we are currently preparing for the next generations isn't very pleasant. We have a colossal deficit, an extremely heavy debt. I could quote you the figures as a percentage of GDP, but that doesn't matter. What you need to understand is that every child born today in Belgium carries a debt of between €50,000 and €60,000. That means that if you have a son, a grandson or a granddaughter, same thing, that child will already have to earn €60,000 during their lifetime just to pay off our way of living. Then that child will have to earn money to secure their own survival, and on top of that, they'll have to pay for the solidarity of their own generation. That's a lot of tax. So let me tell you, ladies and gentlemen: the reforms we're carrying out, we mustn't doubt them. They are fair. They are courageous. And above all, they are inevitable. Because none of you would want to go to a restaurant, order lobster, champagne and caviar, and then phone your son or granddaughter and say: "Could you pop by the restaurant and settle the bill?" Yet that is exactly how we're living. We're living by consuming wealth we haven't created. We're not sharing out wealth, we're sharing out debt, and therefore tomorrow's taxes. So you'll say to me: fine, that's the diagnosis, but what's the solution? There are only two solutions. The first is to increase growth. We must increase our collective wealth. I know that's a taboo word. It's a suspect word. For some, it's almost a guilty word. Would growth make us unhappy? Growth is what allows us, this evening, to be together, to talk with one another and then share a drink afterwards. Without growth, this evening you'd be trying to find firewood to keep warm, and you'd spend the rest of the year trying to grow vegetables in your garden just to feed yourself. Our whole economy, our whole way of life today, rests on the extraordinary growth we've had over the past two centuries. We must reconnect with growth. We must create wealth again. We must invest in the sectors of the future, starting with artificial intelligence. There's work to be done. You should know that today, 5% of global investment in artificial intelligence takes place in Europe, 52% in the United States, 40% in China. The solution is very simple: if we don't increase our investment in what will undoubtedly be the greatest industrial revolution in history, we'll become vassals, either of China, or of the United States, or of both. Because having economic autonomy means having the capacity to carry a societal project. And so, you know, ladies and gentlemen, I sometimes find myself, very rarely, at the centre of a bit of controversy. Some people think they're clever by caricaturing things. But whatever the risk, I believe doing politics isn't about using nice words, it's about telling people the truth. And the truth today is that we're going to have to roll up our sleeves. We're going to have to rebuild industries. We're going to have to reinvest in technology. And, at the same time, we're also going to have to reduce public spending, and I'll come back to that. Now, the left has an easy solution: they tell you we need to tax the broadest shoulders. They're right. They're right. The question is: who are the broadest shoulders? So I did a bit of digging. I went looking among Belgium's organisations for the truly heavyweight ones, Belgium's Sylvester Stallones, if you will. And I got quite a surprise. I discovered that the health insurance funds (mutuelles) had €6 billion in assets. Now those are broad shoulders. Second point: for the left, the "broad shoulders" are often someone who's managed to buy a second, or third, flat. No, no, here we're not talking about small flats. We're talking about over €6 billion in assets. Private assets. So if you don't believe me, because I read in the press these past few days that this was supposedly a "reserve fund", a reserve fund, you understand, to be able to pay for your healthcare, well, first of all, set your mind at ease: your healthcare isn't paid for thanks to the mutuelles. It's paid for through your social security contributions collected by the state, and it's the state that reimburses you. But the state goes through a vehicle: the mutuelles. Relics of a bygone era. No country in the world works this way. None. In France, your healthcare is reimbursed, there are no mutuelles, certainly no politicised mutuelles: it's the state that reimburses you. In Belgium, you can do the same. This may be news to some of you, but you're not obliged to belong to a mutuelle. You can go through CAAMI, it works perfectly well. These mutuelles today don't have a mere reserve fund, they have assets worth over €6 billion, spread across ski resorts, stock market shares, bonds, hotels. There's even a hotel in the Dinant area belonging to the socialist mutuelle, a very fine hotel that hosts luxury car gatherings and which, we checked, wasn't on strike on strike day. So how can it be explained that a large non-profit organisation, such as the Pauvres Sœurs, for example, pays an annual wealth tax of 0.45% on its assets, while the mutuelles are exempt? I don't understand. But I told myself: it must be an oversight. So I dug a little deeper. And I discovered that the mutuelles sell insurance products just like private insurers do: supplementary hospitalisation insurance. And there, I got a truly colossal surprise. Over the same period, DKV paid over €100 million in taxes. And do you know how much the mutuelles paid? Zero. I said to myself: that can't be right, that can't be right! Surely not someone like Jean-Pascal Labille, not a left-wing man, a man who goes on radio and TV to explain that bosses earn too much, while he himself earns more but doesn't want that to be known; not him, who says companies must contribute, a man of solidarity, after all, a man of high moral values, a man of the left… well, believe it or not, it's exactly him. And alongside that, these same structures ask for subsidies to organise, for example, a music festival in Namur. Can we, at some point, stop taking people for fools? I already know the answer. It's very simple: "That's populism." I've already heard that one. Do you know what populism is? Populism is making people believe things that aren't true. But everything I've just told you are facts. Verifiable facts. But why such hostility? The hostility is very simple to explain. People are generally very touchy when it comes to money, and especially when it comes to their own money. And here in Belgium, we have a model between trade unions and mutuelles that is an extremely profitable economic model, and a political model that gives enormous influence to people who have never been elected by anyone. So yes, ladies and gentlemen, I own it, at the risk of some controversy, but I own the fact of touching this country's great taboos. It is not right that the mutuelles can dodge €400 million in taxes over the last four years. It is not right that the mutuelles don't pay the same taxes as structures subject to exactly the same rules. It is not right that equality before the tax system, which the left champions, isn't respected by these very structures. So our proposal is very simple: bring the tax level of the mutuelles into line with that of comparable structures, not to make a budgetary saving, but to lower taxes, to lower the taxes of people starting a new job, allowing them, in their first year of employment, to pay half the tax they would otherwise have owed. Why? To give an incentive to work, to allow these mutuelles to match their actions to their words, to take a genuine act of solidarity, an act in the public interest. So yes, ladies and gentlemen, the Mouvement Réformateur will move forward in this direction, despite all the attacks, despite all the criticism, because there's one fundamental element at stake: justice, respect for the rules, a principle of equality, and the fact that everyone must contribute to solidarity. I mentioned reducing public spending: we must go much further. There are too many politicians in Belgium, there are too many of us, there are too many structures, we must cut back. At Walloon level, we decided to abolish the political tier of the provinces. Provincial staff needn't worry: of course, the teacher who teaches within the provincial network will keep on teaching, we need them. The real question is: does that teacher need provincial councillors, provincial deputies, on top of the other political structures that already exist? I'm not so sure. And in this respect, I'd particularly like, in this province, to thank Sabine and Mélanie, because they are among the provincial elected representatives who have already committed to this reform, who want to ensure that all the resources currently used for public structures are returned to citizens. I think we can give them a big round of applause. Because they don't suffer from what one sometimes sees, a kind of Stockholm syndrome, where, once you're a member of an institution, you feel you must ensure that institution survives at all costs, regardless of how society changes. We must also work on the provinces at the level of intermunicipal bodies. I know that work has already been done in Namur. There's still an enormous amount to do in Hainaut, in Liège and elsewhere in our country. We must also tackle the question of merging municipalities and CPAS, and work on grouping municipalities together too. That's why I launched an initiative within the Mouvement Réformateur, with our local elected representatives, to work on these issues, to be able to move forward together with one goal: reducing the cost of the state so that money can be returned to citizens. Because we wouldn't be sincere, we wouldn't be credible, if we kept telling people we'll lower their taxes without lowering the cost of the state. That's a lie. We can't keep spending more and more every year on public structures and tell people we'll be taking less from them. If we want to take less, we must spend less. And it's possible. It's possible through a different political organisation. It's possible thanks to new technologies. It's also possible by questioning relics of the past that no longer have a reason to exist. That is a strong commitment. And I truly expect, ladies and gentlemen, every elected representative of the Mouvement Réformateur to commit to this direction. Because we don't do politics for the sake of holding office, we do politics to fulfil our task, to honour our commitments, to show ourselves worthy of the trust our fellow citizens have placed in us. I'll tell you one thing: the most important thing isn't accumulating titles, it's the mark you leave behind, the trace you leave. It's being able to say to yourself that you achieved something that shapes the course and the history of our country. It's the idea of being able to say that we managed to implement our programme, which for many years wasn't possible. So don't be afraid, but above all, be fully committed to this endeavour. That's what our fellow citizens expect from each and every one of us. I won't go on much longer. I'll just say one last word about security. Our political movement has made security a priority, because today we can see, whether at international or domestic level, that security is under threat. Our own political movement needs large security deployments to be able to visit certain parts of the country. That's not normal. Today there are people afraid to go into certain neighbourhoods, certain streets. Around our train stations, around certain public buildings, we're seeing levels of decay, levels of begging, of vagrancy, that we hadn't seen for a long time. So yes, ladies and gentlemen, we are committed to strengthening this security. We are committed to ensuring that whoever causes the damage pays for it. You will certainly have noticed, over the holiday period, the events that marked life in Brussels, you know, in the municipality of Mr Laaouej, the man who's going to explain to us how he's going to turn Brussels around after having driven it into bankruptcy. I've always been very impressed by people who were a total failure but who explain that now they're going to do better. Very impressive indeed. Maybe that makes you smile. In any case, we can no longer accept seeing public property damaged, attacks on our police officers, without those acts being punished. We must also ensure that people in an illegal situation, and in particular people who are currently in prison because they've been convicted of ordinary crimes or offences, are sent back to their country of origin. Belgium is a land of welcome, and it must remain so. Belgium must be a land of integration, but Belgium must be respected. There is no reason why we should keep accepting on our territory people who are here illegally, or worse, that 43% of the inmates in our prisons are not Belgian nationals. That costs our fellow citizens €240 million every year. So yes, Belgium must be welcoming to the women and men who want to invest themselves here, who want to work here, who want to build a future together with us. But we must be firm and determined towards those who came to take advantage of us or to threaten our security and our well-being. So, ladies and gentlemen, in this respect, we must also make Belgian nationality harder to obtain. Today, it's possible to obtain Belgian nationality having failed your integration pathway. What's the point of having an integration pathway if it isn't checked at the moment nationality is granted? Now, some people, and I can already hear them, will say: "That's populism, that's extremism." But isn't it simply justice? At some point, isn't wanting the same rules to apply to everyone simply common sense, and shouldn't that guide our action? Aren't we, on the contrary, the strongest bulwark against extremists, against populists, precisely by ensuring our population doesn't throw itself into the arms of extremists of the left or the right? Isn't it our duty to respond to real problems rather than trying to hide them behind pleasant words that don't match reality? So yes, we may well be attacked, but we must do it. We must do it, because it is in everyone's interest. On that note, I wanted to close by telling you something much more personal, about our shared commitment. When I became president of the Mouvement Réformateur in 2019, the word "liberal" had become taboo. In fact, we no longer carried it in our name, "Mouvement Réformateur". And then I said: no, we must say that we are liberals. We even have the famous hashtag #FierDesLibéraux ["Proud to be liberal"]. And now I see plenty of people claiming to be liberals. It's become the new fashion. I won't name them, you know who they are. But they've all become liberals. It really is quite extraordinary. But, let me tell you, we should be glad about that. We should be glad. It means our project has traction. It means people embrace our values. And of course we can always be imitated, but we will never be equalled, rest assured, because we know what liberalism truly is. So, in the coming months, you'll see more attacks, more caricatures, more questioning, and you must not doubt yourselves. You must not apologise. You must not be afraid. We must be campaigning every single day, not to raise a laugh, but to convince, to convince people of the soundness of our reforms, to explain, to be in contact with people, to make it clear that we are working for the women and men who get up every day to build our country. That we are working to give our children a future. That we are working to guarantee the security of our country. That we are working to secure the sovereignty of the European Union. So, ladies and gentlemen, remember one thing: only those who do nothing have no problems. Only those who say nothing have no enemies. So perhaps we'll make a few enemies, a few opponents, but in 2029 we'll have an immense satisfaction: that of having durably reformed Belgium. And that is the very essence of political commitment. So, in 2026, be happy, and that is the greatest wish I can make for you as an individual. Never forget that we get up in the morning to be happy, and to be even happier in the evening than we were when we got up. Be courageous, because courage is a rare commodity, and yet it's the only fuel that lets you achieve things in life. And above all, more than ever, be proud to be liberals. So, just one last word: since it's her birthday, Cécile is buying the drinks, but the bar is open, and it's all you can drink! Cheers, and happy new year!