Proposition 51K2967

Projet de loi modifiant la loi du 11 avril 2003 instituant un service volontaire d'utilité collective.

General information ¶

Authors

MR Philippe Monfils
Open Vld Stef Goris
PS | SP Talbia Belhouari
Vooruit David Geerts

Submission date

March 7, 2007

Official page

Visit

Status

Adopted

Requirement

Simple

Subjects

armed forces social security voluntary work

Voting ¶

Voted to adopt

Vooruit Ecolo LE PS | SP Open Vld MR

Party dissidents ¶

• Ingrid Meeus (Open Vld) voted to adopt.
• Ingrid Meeus (Open Vld) voted to adopt.

Contact form ¶

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Discussion ¶

April 12, 2007 | Plenary session (Chamber of representatives)

Full source

I will be very short.

Thanks to the bill, young people who are unemployed or receive a living wage will be able to perform works of public benefit on a voluntary basis and with the preservation of their unemployment aid or living wage at Defence.

The purpose of the bill is double. First, it gives young people the opportunity to get acquainted with Defense. Second, it is also a social integration project. The aim is to integrate young people.

We discussed the proposal in the National Defence Committee. The whole discussion is contained in the written report, which I would like to refer to for the rest.

Mrs Belhouari, Mr. Monfils and Mr. Geerts are registered.

I would like to ask the registered members to be brief.

Mr. Monfils, be an example of shortness!

Mr. Speaker, last night I heard, for an hour and a half, a proposal for a resolution on medicines used in rest homes. Thus, in five minutes, one can deal with the fate of 1,000 young people who are about to be reintegrated into social life. That is quite logical!

Simply, Mr. President, Mr. Minister, Dear colleagues, the idea of the collective utility service is not new, since almost ten years ago, our colleague, Armand De Decker, had already presented it. The idea was reintroduced in 2003, incorporated into a law drafted in an extremely general manner, which provided that a voluntary service could be performed within the National Defense and that the King could extend this service.

This law will never come into force and the idea came back in the case of the assassination of Joe Van Holsbeeck at the Central Station. It helped restore the general debate on the crime of minors. The issue of the implementation of the 2003 law is indirectly re-actualized. Today, after many discussions and hesitations, the collective utility service is back on the rails.

It should be pointed out, as Ms Meeus said, that the objective of the project is not to replace compulsory military service, since the collective utility service is on a voluntary basis, nor to attract young people to military careers, but rather to respond to social realities, because the collective utility service is specifically aimed at job seekers or beneficiaries of integration income.

It is known that the unemployment rate of young people aged 15 to 24 varies around 20% in our country. Inactivity then becomes the daily life of these young people and the temptations to succumb to the dangers of inactivity are often very strong. The feeling of exclusion and boredom can lead to harmful illegal actions that allow them not only to take care of themselves but also to exist. The danger lies in getting used to this oisivity and making professional insertion even more difficult.

It is therefore a recurring social problem that this insertion of young people in the active life hardly experienced by families. The collective utility service thus becomes a true instrument of social integration and social cohesion. It is aimed at all young job seekers or beneficiaries of social inclusion benefits aged 18 to 25 years. The collective utility service will allow them to acquire a training experience aimed at developing the citizen spirit, relationships and human exchanges as well as sports skills; otherwise, to learn to work in groups, to live and work with different people, in short to have a life discipline.

There is a key point that I want to emphasize: the status of jobseeker is ⁇ ined and participation in the collective utility service does not in any way result in the suspension of waiting, unemployment or family allowances due to the parents of the person concerned.

The whole interest of this service lies in this social goal, in this training that will allow young people to know new directions.

Of course, this is not a job, but an opportunity offered while waiting for a job, an opportunity to spend your free time for the benefit of the community.

Amendments were voted in the committee. They aimed to clarify the areas of activity to which volunteers could be sent. Personally, I wished – I am happy to see that this was followed – not to go too far; it was not necessary to corset this service of collective utility. We need to keep this system alive. It has the advantage of being open and flexible. It is necessary to let this service start, the experience take course. In a few months, it will be necessary to examine its functioning, the true motivations, the desires of the interested parties and the guidelines to be given to this service of collective utility.

We must therefore hope that this service, which will be inaugurated within the Ministry of Defense, will also be initiated in other departments. This is extremely important, especially within the Ministry of the Interior. This is ⁇ a factor of social inclusion. That is why the MP will vote on this bill.

Mr. Speaker, at this early hour, I will reduce my two-hour speech to a few words.

Everything has already been said in the committee. The political starting point of legislation is, on the one hand, to give young people the opportunity to perform a meaningful task for the benefit of society and, on the other hand, to give them the opportunity to pursue a training, to acquire qualifications which allow them to be eventually later incorporated into the labour process.

When we are faced in recent times with the increasing meaningless violence of and between young people, with young people who just hanging around cause trouble, then we as legislators want to provide an alternative.

Will this solve all the problems? Mr. Speaker, no, but it's like Bram Vermeulen once sang, "I moved a stone in a river."

In the committee, a number of colleagues have rightly asked very critical questions, regarding employability, childhood diseases and others. The future will have to show what improvements can be made in the system. But, if we, as a majority today, would do nothing, other colleagues, including the majority, would now most likely criticize the fact that I would not take the word.

For the colleagues around me, for our party, it is important that young people remain available for the labour market, that their social rights are further defended and that they receive a certificate of competence for their skills and in essence of course that these young people in reality do something for the collective benefit.

Mr. Speaker, I would have wanted to mention a few points, but since most of them have been mentioned by my colleagues, I will limit myself to put forward two points.

First of all, the target audience. We speak of young job seekers or beneficiaries of the income of social integration, whether they are men or women, aged between 18 and 25 years, but mostly residing in Belgium. It seems to me important to emphasize the residence condition because this means that the SUC is addressed to young Belgians but also to young foreigners from the European Union or not.

Next, the conditions of admission and termination of the SUC which will be fixed by royal decree. They should re-introduce a series of criminal prohibitions for access to our armed forces, relieved, however, in order to allow young people who have committed minor crimes to take advantage of the opportunity of professional and social integration offered by the SUC. This social dimension is indispensable.

This bill is a good project because it provides young people with a tool that will allow them to benefit from training and professional experience while serving society.