Proposition 51K2190

Projet de loi visant à octroyer une allocation pour l'acquisition du gasoil destiné au chauffage d'une habitation privée.

General information ¶

Submitted by

PS | SP MR Open Vld Vooruit Purple Ⅰ

Submission date

Dec. 27, 2005

Official page

Visit

Status

Adopted

Requirement

Simple

Subjects

petroleum social policy fuel oil tax-free allowance

Voting ¶

Voted to adopt

Vooruit PS | SP Open Vld MR

Abstained from voting

CD&V Ecolo LE N-VA FN VB

Contact form ¶

Do you have a question or request regarding this proposition? Select the most appropriate option for your request and I will get back to you shortly.

Discussion ¶

Feb. 9, 2006 | Plenary session (Chamber of representatives)

Full source

I am referring to my written report.

Mr. Speaker, Mr. Minister, colleagues, this bill regulates the granting of a subsidy for the purchase of home fuel oil for the heating of a private home.

In itself, this is a good measure in a period of rising energy prices.

However, we have two points of criticism to this bill. First, we criticize the concrete approach and development of this dossier. The second point of criticism relates to financing.

The draft will be submitted to the plenary session today, February 9. It was submitted to the Finance Committee on 25 January. However, the draft law covers a specified period, which ends on 31 December 2005. It implements a decision taken by the government in September 2005.

The Program Law of 27 December 2005 already covered part of the legal regulation. It would have been correct if that bill had been discussed in the same assembly. The State Council’s opinion could not be satisfied, as it was already provided on 30 November.

Then I come to the financing.

Financing was normally not a problem. According to the information provided to the Committee on Finance by Secretary of State Jamar, the additional income for the federal government for 2005 would amount to EUR 550 million as a result of increased energy prices and tax increases. Minister Reynders has a different view on this, as he speaks of 250 million euros. We are still waiting for the note from the Finance Inspection to know the correct approach.

In any case, both in the calculation of Mr Jamar and in the calculation of Mr Reynders, with a minimum amount of EUR 250 million, it was clear that the amount was sufficient to finance the contribution to the citizen.

However, the government has taken out a loan, or even a loan from the private sector. This loan came as a result of the budget problem that is generally known here. Before the closing of the 2005 budget, the government applied a number of emergency measures.

I mention, for example, the effectification for an amount of 500 million euros, the acquisition of the pension funds of the port of Antwerp for 236 million euros and the sale of public buildings whose total amount is not yet known. Last week we talked, Mr. Minister, about the dossier Les Dolimarts where a building was sold at 550,000 euros, while the total costs for the Belgian State amounted to 6.5 million euros. This means that a building has been sold at 10% of the total cost to which it has been exposed. There is the acquisition of the NMBS pension fund for 295 million euros, there is the deposit of De Post of 20 million euros: so we can continue with a number of operations that have been there at the end of 2005. Their

Nevertheless, it must be noted that despite all these measures, it was still faced with a deficit budget for 2005. It was then necessary to apply other measures such as shifting invoices, it was necessary to make the manual invoicing of the corporate tax that was planned for 2006 in 2005 for another 160 million euros, but despite all these artificial tricks, the result still proved insufficient. One was then obliged to take out a loan to finance this response and this from the private sector. This loan was also taken, Mr. President, without the authorization of this Parliament. The problem of this loan was sufficiently addressed by colleagues Bogaert and De Crem in the Committee for Finance. I do not think it is necessary to come back to this, but it is obvious that this loan to the private sector is a form of improper governance. Under these circumstances, of course, we cannot approve this bill, which originally had a good intention. We will therefore remember. Their

Finally, Mr. Minister, I would like to ask you about the note of the Finance Inspectorate that you promised. Mr. Gustin will also have noticed it in the preparation for this meeting: in the report you say twice explicitly to the members of the Committee on Finance that you will deliver a note from the Financial Inspection to the members of this Parliament so that they can finally gain insight into the additional revenues that the Belgian State has earned in 2004 and 2005 as a result of the rise in oil prices, including VAT. This also applies to the various tax increases that have taken place in 2003, 2004 and 2005. After all, colleagues, despite the rising energy prices, this government has considered it necessary to increase the taxes on a number of energy products in 2004 and 2005. We would like to know the details of these figures. The Minister has promised this repeatedly, but we are still waiting for the report of the Finance Inspectorate. Per ⁇ the Minister will soon be able to say something about it.

Mr. Speaker, Mr. Speaker, Mr. Speaker, Mr. Speaker, Mr. Speaker, Mr. Speaker, Mr. Speaker, Mr. Speaker, Mr. Speaker, Mr. Speaker, Mr. Speaker, Mr. Speaker, Mr. Speaker, Mr. Speaker, Mr. Speaker, Mr. Speaker, Mr. Speaker, Mr. Speaker, Mr. Speaker, Mr. Speaker, Mr. Speaker, Mr. Speaker, Mr. Speaker. This method was, in my opinion, not the best, even though I gave an argument to mr. the Minister, revealing to him that I had benefited from the situation, since, as a person, I have benefited from a discount. However, I would have preferred that the financial measures taken in this context had a more social impact and that they were distributed more equitably.

I would like to insist on a very spinning point, namely the obviously voluntary exclusion of communities in this bill. The motivation is quite simple: the measure is aimed at individuals, with the exception of those who reside in collective structures, such as children’s centres, schools, rest homes and for which discussions with the Communities and even the Regions need to be initiated. But there is no direct intervention and a problem of competence is invoked for this: the federal is not concerned.

To return to reality, the increase in oil oil has consequences on the life of each person, wherever they are: in a private home or in a collective reception structure such as the school or the hospital. Therefore, there is no need for divisions at the level of our citizens. They are all involved, regardless of their quality.

What are the reasons that lead the state to consent to an effort in favour of individuals? On the one hand, help them in relation to the rise of petroleum products and, on the other hand, apply a kind of return law: VAT on petroleum products has increased due to the increase in their price. Therefore, the state that earned more on this plan redistributes to people who, buying and using these products, spend more in VAT. That is, if the collective structures are involved!

Yesterday, the Minister of Social Affairs was arrested by my colleague Drèze, because the prices of stays in holiday homes have increased to include the surplus cost of oil products. The Council of State had well highlighted this problem of non-respect for the equality of Belgians before the law: depending on whether one stays in collective structures or in a private home, the treatment is different. The State Council, having taken up the statements of the government delegate, had pointed out that the possibility of seeing an invariable character of the residence package to be paid was not generalizable.

It cannot be excluded that the operator of the collective accommodation structure increases the claimed accommodation costs in accordance with the fluctuation of oil prices.

It is important that the projected mechanism be revised, the State Council said, to cover this second hypothesis, otherwise the law would violate articles 10 and 11 of the Constitution. Indeed, those persons who are forced to opt for this type of accommodation because of their condition (chronic illness, elderly or disabled persons) constitute the categories of citizens for whom a differentiated treatment cannot be conceived, in particular since it cannot be presumed that they would be better able to cope with this increased financial burden.

The answer given by the government does not seem sufficient to me when one merely says that because of the formulation of the notion of entitled, which differs from that submitted to the State Council’s opinion, and by the effect of the mechanism of calculation of the intervention, the State Council’s opinion on the inclusion of residents of collective structures is not followed. This problem exists and, as far as schools are concerned, we are told that it falls within the competence of the Communities, that there is no direct impact and that, in any case, the Community benefits from the increase in VAT revenues. This answer also does not seem justifiable to me, since everyone knows that when it comes to VAT allocation for the financing of the Communities, it has nothing to do with VAT; it is part of our somewhat surreal situation: VAT allocation is linked to other criteria than VAT revenues. The only thing that has an impact is the indirect effect associated with inflation, but it does not really fit into this logic.

Although we agree with the logic of this bill, namely that we must help our fellow citizens because they face additional expenses related to the evolution of the cost of oil and that, in addition, it is a redistribution of the additional revenues that the State draws from VAT, the exclusion of collective structures is nevertheless not reasonable or justified and plunges a number of people into a more difficult situation. Indeed, tomorrow, an increase in fees could be demanded from the sick and students, as is already happening in the rest homes. It is therefore necessary to go further in this logic by automatically extending the measurement to those who are at school, in rest homes and in hospitals. That is why our group will abstain from this bill.

Mr. Speaker, Mr. Deputy Prime Minister, given the brief intervention of my opposition colleagues, I will also be very brief.

First, I would like to express my satisfaction to see this project result in this assembly, following what I will call a fairly broad consensus within the Finance Committee.

This, despite a few peripeties sometimes on advance interests from a pre-financing agreement — widely criticized but ultimately resulting in a single abstinence on the project itself —, sometimes on other questions, very interesting by the way, which have been repeated today before you by our opposition colleagues: they concern the budget balance or the intervention of other levels of power in the issue that concerns us. At some times, we even went so far as to ask questions about the renewal of the mandate of the members of the Supreme Council of Finance.

I would now like to briefly outline this project by reminding you that it was from the beginning of September that the government, wishing at the time to react to the worrying evolution of energy prices, decided to introduce a series of measures. In terms of heating, the intervention envisaged focused on both domestic fuel, gas and electricity, and this, for the benefit of individuals.

As the Minister of Finance recalled, it is to ease the bill of 4 million households that the government has heard through various measures. Belgium thus becomes, while respecting its budget balance, I insist, the only European country to have taken the initiative of social measures implementing, for the benefit of the individuals concerned, appropriate aid aimed at easing the heating bill.

This project thus translates one of the parts of the government decision of 9 September 2005. It also organises for the benefit of the citizen an intervention of the federal state in the invoice of individuals for the purchase of gasoline for the heating of a private home. The amount of this allowance is 17.35% of the price of the supply of heating gasoline. It is, however, limited to the part of the price that exceeds EUR 0.5 per litre and for supplies delivered during the period from 1 June to 31 December 2005. I will not extend to the details concerning supplies made from 1 October 2005 and from 1 June 2005 to 30 September 2005 and which are subject to a differentiated regime.

Finally, I will speak with a lot of emphasis on the quality of the recipients. Dear colleagues, who are the beneficiaries of this measure?

In the definition of beneficiaries of the law, the emphasis has been placed on the fact that persons who occupy a private home under a real property right or a personal right, which is the property lease contract, and are the right recipients are the beneficiaries of this measure.

Of course, it is this category of people who are directly confronted with the rising prices of heating gasoline. In terms of gasoline alone, therefore, it is 1.250,000 households that benefit from this temporary aid, of course, but oh how precious for the poorest to whom it addresses.

I will conclude this brief speech by saying that we will follow the other measures announced in favour of households and that we welcome the consequent gesture of the federal state which is 10 million euros, the government having committed, towards the communities whose schools depend primarily, to settle the problem of the rising cost of energy for these communities.

This is briefly what I wanted to say about this project. I have summed up some important but detailed elements, because I believe that it is on the level of principles that it is necessary to insist.

I will be brief because we have already discussed these two points in the committee.

There was, in the first place, the request for an opinion from the Financial Inspectorate. In the Committee on Finance it was agreed to draw up a list of questions related to the evolution of revenue, after which it would be possible to seek the opinion of the Financial Inspectorate.

I have since enkele weken diverse vragen gekregen in verband met cliquetsysteem, BTW-ontvangsten in accijnsontvangsten. I wacht nu op een lijst met questions van commissie en daarna komt er een nota van Inspectie van Financiën. Regarding the collective structures and the remarks of Mr. Viser, I explained in a committee that we had decided to make 10 million euros available to the Communities and Regions on the basis of the surplus costs they declared, which were slightly less than 10 million euros. We went a little further than what was requested. We will present all the proposals and projects to be adopted by the Parliament. It will be up to the Regions and Communities to distribute these resources to all collective structures. I believe that the effort is done in the same way by the federal government with respect to these structures. I hope that the distribution will be done not only in schools but also in all other structures that may be affected. by

I will conclude with two remarks.

First, there is a lot of discussion about the modes of this measure. This measure comes in aid to 4 million households for approximately 250 million euros of intervention without the consumer having to put their hand in the pocket. At a time when we talk a lot about purchasing power, it was important to decide as early as September to take this measure. I would like to emphasize that we are the only European country to act in this way and on this scale.

Second, this is an emergency measure for the winter 2005-2006. I remind, in parallel, since nothing has been said, that we have taken measures in the medium and long term because it will especially be necessary to raise awareness of the need to save energy and to use different energies. A number of fiscal measures are envisaged in this regard.

For the rest, the project is actually only realising what had already been announced. It is at the request of Parliament that we did not attach this to the program law that was adopted at the end of the year. We proposed it a little later, all the terms having been announced by publication on the Monitor and by communications.

I would like to remind you that we returned earlier than planned in the Finance Committee in September 2005 to give all the details to the House. In response to the criticism about the late filing of the project, I think it is necessary to take into account how we wanted to work: immediately, with complete information for the Chamber. All this was done in September, before the parliamentary entry.

Mr. Speaker, not so much as yesterday with Mr. Demotte, I cannot be satisfied with the implicit response of the Minister of Finance on the case that Mr. Demotte did. Viseur spoke at the moment about rest homes. by

We must not blame the Communities and Regions for not taking care of the rest houses because in our opinion, in this case, the case is 100% of the competence of the federal. by Mr. Demotte told us that he is concerned only for care. I answered him yesterday that the care was not done in the garden, under the snow, but that it was done in the rest house. If he intervenes for hospitals in regard to care, he must intervene for rest homes for the care part.

For the part of housing, I cannot explain that, for example, for a person aged 70 years old, depending on whether he lives in his home, he gets an intervention from the federal and depending on whether he lives collectively with other people in a rest house, there is no more intervention from the federal.

I personally no longer tolerate that the ball is returned to the Communities and Regions, while in this case, in an extremely clear way, it is the federal and only he who is competent. It intervenes in the other cases and not in the rest houses. There is a flagrant injustice and you will have recourse. The opinion of the State Council opens the door to appeals at this level.