The MR wishes you a wonderful, sunny Flemish Community Day!
Flanders and Wallonia are each other's leading trading partners. So what is good for Flanders is good for Wallonia and Brussels, and vice versa.
The MR works every day for prosperity for all Belgians.
To secure your prosperity, we urgently need more economic growth. We achieve this through industry, investment and getting as many people as possible into work.
The MR has put work back at the heart of our society. Anyone who works will always receive at least 500 euros more than someone who remains unemployed.
Thanks to the tax reform approved this week, workers will always earn at least an extra 1,300 euros net per year. For a family with a minimum wage and one child, this can rise to almost 5,000 euros. That's like getting a fourteenth month's pay.
Those who can work must do so. That is why we have abolished unemployment benefits after two years. Because work is the best social policy.
The MR is the real party of working people.
That is why wage indexation remains in place.
That is why we successfully blocked a VAT increase to 22%.
That is why we return the state's extra tax revenue when fuel prices rise.
The MR is working for affordable and abundant energy. With a reliable mix of nuclear, renewable and fossil energy sources. We oppose European rules that would make energy more expensive. This too is necessary to safeguard your purchasing power, to let our businesses thrive and to grow our economy.
This growth must exceed inflation to cover rising costs and expenditure. Otherwise we collectively lose wealth.
The government knows what needs to be done to curb the budget deficit by the end of the legislature. It must find almost eight billion. For the MR, it could even go further: ten to twelve billion to stay below a four percent deficit. This way, we stay ahead of France and out of the sights of the financial markets.
The only tax justice is a tax cut. Over the past forty years, everything has already been taxed. Now state spending must come down.
Over the past ten years, government spending has risen by 66 percent, while revenue has only increased by 50 percent. Meanwhile, our gross domestic product, the sum of the wealth we produce together each year, has grown by only 20 percent.
Social security spending has increased by 88 percent over the past ten years. That is three times the rate of inflation and 66 percent of the entire state budget.
The report from the Monitoring Committee confirms what MR President Georges-Louis Bouchez has been saying for a long time. Belgium does not have a revenue problem, as revenue is set to rise by an average of 2.2 percent annually until 2031. The problem lies with government spending, which is increasing by 3.3 percent each year over the same period.
The task is therefore not ideological but mathematical: reform and cut spending, not tax.
The divide in our country runs between left and right.
Not between Flemings and Walloons.
Not between north and south.
The MR makes the difference, for Flemings too.
Enjoy Flemish Community Day.