Proposition 51K2894

Projet de loi modifiant la loi ordinaire du 16 juillet 1993 visant à achever la structure fédérale de l'Etat.

General information ¶

Submitted by

PS | SP MR Open Vld Vooruit Purple Ⅰ

Submission date

Feb. 6, 2007

Official page

Visit

Status

Adopted

Requirement

Simple

Subjects

tax environmental protection environmental tax preparation for market

Voting ¶

Voted to adopt

Vooruit PS | SP Open Vld MR

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 ¶

March 8, 2007 | Plenary session (Chamber of representatives)

Full source

In a judgment of 11 January 2007, the Court of Arbitration abolished Article 371 of the Ordinary Law of 16 July 1993 on the completion of the federal state structure. This bill was submitted with the aim of rewriting and amending the article, which deals with the packaging tax on beverage packaging, within the meaning of the judgment under appeal.

On a question from Mr. Devlies, the Secretary of State, Mr. Jamar, answered that the decision of the Court of Arbitration of 11 January 2007 will have no budgetary impact, because the sectors concerned have not stopped their payments. The draft law was notified to the European Commission on 14 February 2007.

The Secretary of State also cited that the abolished legislation introduced a zero tariff for those who wanted to work in an environmentally responsible way. By executing the judgment, everyone will now have to pay the packaging tax. The Secretary of State also clarified that the packaging is at least seven times reusable, as a criterion for whether or not reusable. A packaging that is reused 30 times is therefore no problem in this regard.

The entire bill was adopted with nine votes in favour and two votes against.

The essence of the report brings the Chamber into communication.

Colleague Devlies has the word.

Mr. Speaker, colleagues, I would like to thank Mr. Tommelein for his excellent and concise report. I will also try to be concise.

This bill is a new episode in the feuilleton, the bad feuilleton or the purple feuilleton of the beverage packaging taxes. It is a story of failures, deceptions of Parliament and the public, misprints for the institutions, for the Court of Arbitration, for the Council of State and above all of 300 million euros annually in additional taxes. Concretely, this means 10 cents per liter or with 6 bottles of one and a half liters in plastic packaging means that 1 euro. For each package of 6 bottles, the consumer pays an additional tax of 1 euro.

The strange thing is that these taxes are always levied on an illegal basis. This is called environmental taxes, while no environmental objective can be demonstrated. This feuilleton has been running since 1999, since the entrance of the current government. My predecessor in the Committee on Finance, Yves Leterme, in one of the last plenary meetings he participated in this hemisphere, made an overview of the history of the beverage packaging tax between 1999 and 2004. It was a sequence of faulty legislation, destruction, suspension and again faulty repair legislation. Three years later, we are still in the same situation of faulty legislation, irregularity and repair legislation.

This bill is again a repair law, after the destruction of the last law of July 2006 as our reporter recently ⁇ . Furthermore, the opportunity is used to impose a new tax, which is always welcomed by certain factions in this Chamber. This time it is about a tax on the reusable beverage packaging. This new tax is not only contrary to all logic, but is also completely contrary to the argument used by the government to push through the previous legislation.

In the past, it was supposedly intended to encourage consumers to choose reusable beverage packaging. It is precisely those reusable beverage packaging that will also be taxed under this new law. For companies, this represents a situation of legal uncertainty. We are just that in the meantime. In fact, it has given companies the signal to invest in production processes based on reusable packaging. For example, new bottle lines have come, new products have been developed, new bottles have been developed, promotional campaigns have been organized, based on the previous legislation and on the commitments that this government has made and from which it is now returning. These companies are now clearly undermined.

In the committee, I have made some technical observations on the legislation. I will not take them back. The core question remains – and the minister will soon be happy to answer, I suppose – where is the environmental balance for that legislation? What scientific studies support that government decision?

What is the difference between reusable and non-reusable beverage packaging? On what basis is the rate of reusable packaging now determined? Is that based on the fact that the legislation provides that a bottle must be reused 7 times in order to be considered reusable? If so, I would refer to the comments made by the sector. For example, the beer industry states that an average bottle is reused 30 times. A beer bottle is reused 30 times. In the water sector this happens 15 times. I would have liked to have some explanation on this.

In addition, I refer to the observations of the Council of State, which are of course in line with the content of the various judgments of the Court of Arbitration. In essence, it argues that there is insufficient evidence that the constitutional principle of equality is respected. I ask you to show that the constitutional principle of equality is respected in this regard.

Furthermore, the State Council notes that there is no allocation to the overall environmental balance.

Where is this environmental balance? I do not find it in the documents. This is not included in the preparatory work. The observations of the State Council and the Arbitration Court are simply not answered: no effort is even made to answer these objections. It is therefore obvious that the likelihood of destruction of this new repair law is very, very great. It is very likely that the law you will pass today will again be destroyed by the Arbitration Court. You do not even make the effort to defend this legislation. Why don’t you do that effort? Because the destruction does not disturb you. You know that destruction will come after the dissolution of the Parliament and that this is again a file that will be transferred to the next government, just like so many other delicate files that are transferred to the next government, just like the heavy budget problems that our country is facing and which are also being transferred.

Mrs. Minister, I assume that the government will not return to its bill. I would have liked to hear a minimum of defence in relation to this bill that is manifestly again contrary to the Constitution and that will most likely again be destroyed by the Arbitration Court. What are the arguments of the government to push this through?

Mr. Speaker, Mrs. Minister of Medium and Small and Medium Enterprises, dear colleagues, as the President has already indicated, the title of the present bill is "Draft Law amending the law of 16 July 1993 to complete the federal state structure". This may not make it clear immediately, but in fact it is about introducing a tax: an eco-tax, introduced by Minister Reynders in 2002. Therefore, we can also call it the Reynderstaks.

I must point out to my colleagues that ecoboni, as an equivalent to the ecotax, has been absent for years. The entire dossier of the eco-tax is gradually becoming a real torture for this government of liberals and socialists and can, as far as the Flemish Interest Faction is concerned, be placed on the rubble of purple. I will not detail the legal path of suffering or the chronicle of the announced death of the Reynderstaks. In fact, we have already drawn this dossier from the previous legislature and who has followed the dossier in recent years, I will not have to convince any more.

The entire game was impacted on the car by the destruction by the Arbitration Court on 14 December 2005 of several essential articles of the Ecotox Act of 22 December 2003. This judgment annulled, as of 1 July 2006, the exemption from the packaging tax for non-reusable beverage packaging containing a quantity of recycled raw materials.

Then there was the judgment of the Arbitration Court of 18 October 2006, which suspended the Reparation Act of 20 July 2006 due to lack of motivation for the new tax, for the new tax.

On 11 January 2007, very recently, the Arbitration Court again suspended a repaired article, namely Article 371.

Since that judgment of 14 December 2005, the Purple Government has begun to focus on one repair after the other, even to the extent that the present draft reuses Article 371, which was previously abolished by the Arbitration Court, and thus currently no longer makes a distinction between single-use packaging and reusable packaging.

For example, a packaging fee of 10 euro cents per liter is introduced for beverages packaged in individual and thus single-use packages. Then, of course, comes the trick with the rabbit. For reusable packaging, there was previously an exemption. This is now being discarded. It is estimated that the reusable packaging is used up to seven times. Consequently, one simply applies a rate of one seventh of the amount of 10 euro cents, approximately 1.4 euro cents per liter.

It is in this ratio of a seventh that the big trick lies. For beer bottles, for example, the common practice is that they can be reused up to 30 times. This means that the use of glass bottles will become more expensive for the consumer, while it should be the intention of promoting and encouraging reusable bottles and thus not imposing additional taxes.

In addition, the entire dossier has become a suffering path of legal uncertainty, with the entry into force delayed several times. In addition, the rate of the packaging fee was also changed several times, which, of course, has not missed its effect on the turnover of water and soft drinks of the middle state, ⁇ not in the border regions, Mrs. the Minister.

Any reasonable government that has an eye for good governance with quality legislation and which has administrative simplification as a policy priority, a government that makes purchasing power and a benevolent economy as its main priorities or policy priorities, should realize that there is no more good side to this legislation. All one can do is simply abolish them and start again with a proper lei and with a decent and thoughtful concept.

This is not the case, my colleagues. Their decision to do so is not at all motivated by the environmental aspect or the environmental motives, but is exclusively motivated by budgetary objectives.

That is also stated with so many words in the memory of explanation to the present draft. The couple is not ashamed anymore. Therefore, there is a need to work quickly again and act urgently. On an annual basis, paars has also registered a revenue of 262 million euros in the 2006 budget. For the 2007 budget, it is about 576 million euros. As is so often the case with purple, here too is the motto “it is for the poon that we do it”.

Meanwhile, Verhofstadt holds a coffee bar with Al Gore in his office home. He stood here in the public tribune in October and said, “You have those who talk about Kyoto and you have those who really want to do something about it.” Colleagues, this bill clearly shows that purple is not in power to do anything about it, except to impose new taxes. They are strong in that. That is also why my group will vote against.

Mr. Speaker, just a few small comments.

Are you speaking loco Mr. Reynders?

Yes, I am proud of it.

It has been said that this law is a new tax, but I must say that since 2002 the government has reduced VAT from 21% to 6% for water and soda. Additionally, the water excise tax was abolished. That means more than 300 million euros less money for the federal budget.

Mr. Devlies asked why there is a factor 7 between the reusable packaging and the non-reusable packaging. It is very simple, Mr. President. There is the 1993 law that I think was proposed and approved by the CVP, along with Ecolo and Green. In that law there is a factor 7 between reusable and non-reusable packaging. In order to include that factor 7 in the law, an environmental balance was created to define this.

This government is not used to doing what has been done well. We therefore retained this seven factor to apply a different rate to reusable packaging. If this law of 1993 had not been accompanied by laws of repair, what was proposed at the time was a rate of 15 Belgian francs per bottle on reusable packaging, regardless of the content. Mr. Speaker, the rate would still be that if this government had not created compensation laws to apply rates four times lower than expected on one-litre bottles and twenty times less on 20 cl bottles. To sum up, the government changed what was supposed to be so that this tax does not prove to be excessive for the industry.

Mr. Speaker, Minister Laruelle has the difficult task of replacing Minister Reynders.

Hard to replace...

In my view, Minister Reynders would like to be replaced in the treatment of the present bill. He was also replaced in the committee. He is well aware that the bill is unconstitutional.

This is the main question I have asked the Deputy Minister and I have not received an answer. That is the essence.

One goes back to a legislation dating from Mr. Dehaene. You have not been well informed, Mr. Minister. This legislation was intended to promote recycling. The objectives of this legislation have been almost fully achieved. Recycling is now well above 90%. Since the introduction of the purple government in 1999, one problem has emerged after another. The present bill is a repair law of a law of last year, which in turn was a repair law for an earlier law of the same government. This is how you can go back in time. The responsibility lies entirely with this government.

My question is the following. Where is the environmental balance? Demonstrate that the law, contrary to the views of the Arbitration Court and the Council of State, is constitutionally in order. One reason why Minister Reynders is absent in both the committee and today in the hemisphere is that the government lets the Parliament approve something that is unconstitutional and that it knows very well that it will be destroyed again. This is a problem for the next government.

Mrs. Minister, the minimum you should do is prove that the opposition, the State Council and the Arbitration Court are wrong. You do not do it. You do not answer the essential questions. I forgive you that, because it is not your file, but that of Minister Reynders.

Mr. Speaker, I would like to point out that the Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Finance has apologized to you.

by Mr. Reynders has very many gifts – replacing it is always a dangerous exercise – but he has not yet the gift of ubiquity, to the great joy of many elsewhere.

Madame Laruelle, you show kindness to the Deputy Prime Minister!

Mr. Speaker, if the Minister is prevented, I understand. I suppose he is prevented. He also said this in advance. What I do not assume is that, if someone else appears on behalf of the government, that person is unable to answer. Mrs. Laruelle, you’re sitting there with that cuddled child on your womb and you can’t do anything about it. So is it.

Mr. Speaker, Mr. I don’t like my answers, it’s one thing, but to say I don’t answer is another. I have added a number of elements to supplement his information. There has also been an extensive discussion on this issue in the committee. As for the opinions of the Court of Arbitration or others, we await them with great serenity.

Mr. Speaker, I would only like to point out to my colleagues that the Court of Arbitration also reads the report of the discussions in the Chamber. The last decision of the Court of Arbitration expressly refers to the previous discussion we had in the plenary session. This debate is therefore really important.

Of course that is important. Every debate is important.