Proposition 52K0846

Projet de loi modifiant l'article 215 de la loi-programme du 27 décembre 2004 afin d'élargir le public-cible pouvant bénéficier d'une allocation de chauffage du Fonds social Mazout.

General information ¶

Authors

CD&V Nathalie Muylle
LE Joseph George
MR Jean-Jacques Flahaux
Open Vld Bart Tommelein
PS | SP Colette Burgeon

Submission date

Feb. 20, 2008

Official page

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Status

Adopted

Requirement

Simple

Subjects

petroleum social policy welfare fuel oil

Voting ¶

Voted to adopt

Groen CD&V Vooruit Ecolo LE PS | SP Open Vld N-VA LDD MR FN VB

Contact form ¶

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Discussion ¶

Feb. 21, 2008 | Plenary session (Chamber of representatives)

Full source

We agreed that there would be an oral report.

I give the floor to Mr. Secretary General, rapporteur

Mr. Speaker, dear colleagues, the public health committee has just examined and voted on the bill proposed by Mrs. Burgeon and colleagues to amend the law on the heating allowance of the Social Oil Fund.

The purpose of this text of law is, in fact, to take into account certain observations of the State Council and thus to avoid legal problems, by adding the categories of beneficiaries beside the amounts that are planned to be able to benefit from the Oil Social Fund. Of course, this element had to be added to the law in order to allow the King, therefore the government, to be empowered to modify the beneficiary categories and to expand the scope of beneficiaries of the intervention of the Social Oil Fund.

Several members participated in the discussion. Thus, Ms. Douifi spoke on behalf of sp.a to recall that a proposal of the PS and sp.a had been filed, but that it had to wait for a government to be set up in order to be able to debate this oil social fund. Then, it was necessary to wait for the PS to be part of this government to correct the proposals that had been made. If the sp.a. agrees with the principle of this intervention, it regrets nevertheless that the technical element that we are talking about today was not integrated immediately when it was in the original bill. The sp.a, of course, supports the expansion of the public concerned, but it has submitted an amendment, which is on the banks of that Parliament, aiming to fix the application of the Oil Social Fund on 1 September 2007 in order to avoid the existence of two categories of beneficiaries and thus allowing all to benefit in the same way of the repayment measure established since January 2008.

The amendment to the sp.a-spirit was submitted to the committee and was voted; I will return to it when I discuss the outcome of the votes.

Other members spoke: Mr. Bultinck for the Vlaams Belang, Mrs De Maght for the LDD, Mrs Muylle for the CD&V - N-VA.

For Ecolo-Groen!, Ms. Gerkens also intervened, indicating that the legislative text we voted for was not clear enough and that a correction was needed. She stated that the Ecolo-Groen group! He would support the proposal but doubted the relevance of this type of policy in the current energy context. It added that measures should be taken to save energy and that it was in favour of the retroactivity of the entry into force of this text on 1 September.

Minister Dupont specified that he was working with his colleague Mr. Magnet to the establishment of a single energy and energy saving fund, bringing together all existing funds. He signed his agreement on the bill, which constitutes a technical amendment to what had been voted.

What do you want me to do? Ask your question to the President.

In fact, there is no minister. I suggest that Mr. Mayeur continues his report and I call a minister.

I will tell you what the Minister said.

Minister Dupont indicated that he was working with his colleague Mr. Magnet to the establishment of a single energy fund covering all the measures aimed at intervening in the field of both energy and energy savings. He signed his agreement on the bill, which constitutes a technical amendment to the text we voted for. It opposed, for practical reasons of entry into force, in particular in the CPAS, the amendment proposed by the sp.a-spirit, stating that the fact of retroactively acting on 1 September, beyond the scrupulously legal aspect, would constitute a difficulty of application for the CPAS.

For my part, I indicated, on behalf of the PS, that we were in favour of the fact that the measure "Oil Fund" intervenes much earlier in the year, but that it was the absence of government that had delayed its entry into force. Political crises in Belgium are not neutral to the citizen. Therefore, the Oil Fund intervenes four months after the date that should have represented for us that of its entry into force.

The Minister also indicated that the number of beneficiaries was not known at the moment and that he would come to report later on the exact figures of the scope of the new Oil Fund. It can already be estimated that these numbers will be multiplied by three, that there will be three times more beneficiaries than according to the previous formula.

As regards votes, with the exception of amendments and technical corrections to article 2, the details of which can be found on your banks, all articles were adopted unanimously. The amendment of the sp.a to Article 3 concerning the entry into force was rejected.

Dear colleagues, I thank you.

The general discussion will begin when the competent Minister is present. He has been summoned and I hope he will come from minute to minute.

We can resume our work now that the competent minister is here. Thank you for being welcomed with applause.

Who will register for the general discussion? I have Mr Bultinck, Mrs Gerkens, Mrs Van der Straeten and Mrs Douifi, who, in any case, wish to speak on the amendment.

Since this is a very important topic, I would like to remind you of the history of the Social Oil Fund.

There was a PS-sp.a bill, in which our group without any problem supported the high urgency, because we are aware that the high fuel prices and relatives are a problem. You know our attitude. One cannot be more social than the Flemish Interest. Therefore, we supported the urgency without any problem.

Mr. Minister, I also refer to legislative proposals from a number of colleagues, including from Mr. Valkeniers, which are in the meantime and in which we also propose to reduce the VAT rates applicable to natural gas and fuel oil from 21% to 6%. It is painful that when we discussed the famous PS-sp.a bill in the committee a few months ago, each of us was confronted with – the orange-blue colleagues were still negotiating at that time – a notorious amendment referring to a regulation within the government for the entire arrangement. The regulation would therefore be met with KB.

I then cynically said, Mr. Minister, that we do not trust the Belgian government. So I had no confidence that such important matters would be settled at KB. I am a happy man today, when I see the present bill. As an opposition party, we now have a surplus of equality. The State Council today gives us a technical surplus of equal. A few months ago we said in the committee that this cannot be arranged through a KB, but that it must be done through legislative work, with a bill or a bill.

Colleagues of the then orange-blue, today it turns out clearly that in this file you were real prutsers and ultimately were unable to do good legislative work. If I look today at the political colour – it is ⁇ symbolic – of the minister and the political colour of the reporter, Mr. Mayeur, then it has become clear who also in this dossier has taken his battle home. For us, that is no problem. The PS came into the government and – I have just congratulated you in the committee for that, Mr. Minister – the first trophy for the PS is indeed in. The Social Oil Fund is being expanded.

The colleagues of orange-blue opposed an expansion. That was also the real reason, colleague Tommelein, why one wanted to arrange this through a KB. Initially, it was not planned to expand at all. We have always said that there were some technical problems. The OCMW made a number of technically justified comments. For the then orange-blue, this should be ⁇ painful. The PS came into the government and now has its first trophy. Keep calm on this social momentum.

For this, you will even find the necessary support from my group, if it does not succeed in your own majority, or whatever for a majority must continue. Continue calmly on your social momentum. You will receive our support for this.

Ladies and gentlemen, I am going around. We will with conviction support the present bill, not because it would be a perfect arrangement, but because we – you must forgive me, colleague Tommelein – are at least consistent in our reasoning. We built up a reasoning at that time, in the discussion of the bill of PS and sp.a. This reasoning continues to this day. We will support this bill with enthusiasm. I will say more. We will even support the amendment of sp.a, which wants to go much further, from social considerations. We believe that in this file something must be done for the people, even though this is not a perfect arrangement.

Mr. Speaker, Mr. Minister, colleagues, we will support this proposal because the Flemish Interest really needs this social measure.

Mr. Speaker, I will obviously not take this opportunity to fully revive the debate on how to help our citizens pay their energy bills. Nevertheless, today we are faced with the aberration of a political functioning that does not want to take into account the primary measures. In fact, in order to help our citizens have lighter energy bills, we need to help them save energy. For years, environmentalists have been defending this viewpoint and calling on the current government to take rapid and radical measures to activate the tools, to advance the money – already present – to the citizens, in a way that saves energy.

I am told that this issue is progressing, but I see that it is progressing so slowly that it has not yet come into practice. On the other hand, while we had debates in parliament on legislative proposals submitted by the Socialists, that the discussions were in full and that we could have had a law that defined the categories eventually expanded and the amounts to be granted, a majority of parliamentarians in the negotiation phase refused to adopt these texts in committee and in plenary session.

In conclusion, the article in the government program law does not specify anything and leaves everything to be settled by decree. It is therefore an inaccurate text, worked and adopted in urgency that we need to correct today! It is neither for the honour of parliamentary work nor for the benefit of the citizens!

Despite the criticism I have just repeated about the mechanism and the fact that the savings were not taken into account, we will vote for this technical modification. Indeed, from the moment when the expansion of the Oil Social Fund was adopted, it is important that legal certainty is guaranteed and that we cannot go backwards. Citizens who have a right to it expect to actually have a right to it!

Furthermore, it is offensive for politics, for Parliament, to have adopted a text which, of course, had consequences for citizens, but which contained errors at a point such that it has already had to be corrected and represented for examination before the assemblies.

With regard to the amendment that proposes to advance the entry into force of the provisions on 1 September 2007, and that Ms. Douifi has not yet had the opportunity to present you in plenary, we have obviously supported it and will continue to support it.

Indeed, the argument that energy bills are too big to be borne by the citizen dates from the beginning of the winter. Therefore, it is important to be able to help those who could not wait until 1 January to start making their full, when it is known that the poorest must do it economically, by limiting the quantities, and that those who benefit from the enlargement have not all been able to wait until 1 January 2008 to benefit from a measure that policies promised to citizens even before the text is adopted, or almost since September.

Therefore, the ethics to be adopted in this regard is to anticipate the date of entry into force of the measure.

This is the second time in this quarter that we are talking about the Social Oil Fund. The government – especially the French-speaking socialists, but also the others – is running down its feet to convince everybody that it is such a social proposal and that it is so good for the people, especially for the poor people.

I made a few comments here when we first talked about it. I will make them again.

I think these are comments that deserve to be taken in order to work on a structural policy. A social fuel fund, as it has existed for several years, is, in my opinion, nothing more than a small drop on a very hot plate.

Here in the hemisphere there are a lot of people who have another mandate, who are, for example, OCMW council member or OCMW chairman, or who sit in a municipal council, or are mayor. I ask you, check in your local OCMW, with the people who need to resort to a replacement income, who can hardly pay bills, who heats there with fuel oil. I think the truth will be discouraging and ⁇ uncomfortable. People with really very low incomes often do not heat with fuel oil but simply with gas buses purchased in the store, which are connected to a gas oven. They heat with wood, not with fuel oil at all. These people are absolutely not helped with this proposal.

I also wonder: what help a few euros if the heat runs along the windows, the doors, the show, the roof, the floor outside.

Mrs. Mayeur wants to interrupt you for a moment.

We think that this fund should have come into force much earlier: as I said, the PS would have wanted this measure to come into force much earlier but this was not possible because there was no government. You know, like me, that you have to wait for the constitution of a government.

Secondly, you say this is a small drop for people. Three hundred thousand households will benefit from this intervention. It is nothing! Given the cost for a household to fill its oil tank, a financial intervention by the state is not negligible. We struggle to improve the social conditions and the economic conditions of people, and that matters. You’re not going to change the people’s heating system with a magic stick: they have oil tanks.

When you talk about CPAS, you forget one fundamental thing: it is that there is not only this fund, there are others such as the Energy Fund, former Vande Lanotte funds, which allow us in the CPAS to act in favor of all people who have difficulty getting warm, regardless of the heating mode. We say that this intervention needs to be better structured. That is why the minister himself said that he was in favor and that he was thinking with his colleague Paul Magnette about the establishment of a single fund taking over the Oil Fund and other energy funds that allow us to fight over-indebtedness, among other things.

The miserabilist example you take is false and unfounded; the CPAS can intervene in such cases. Many of them do even better as they allow people to restore a conventional heating system, adequate and accepted by the control bodies in the homes. Therefore, your intervention is not based on the reality of the field.

Mr. Mayeur, what is the reality? In the fund you cite, there is 100 million sleeping money. My colleague Yalçin asked the minister how many loans the local governments have closed. I think it was a loan.

You can beat yourself on the chest here and say that you have good funds, but the fund doesn’t work. It does not work. Local authorities do not appeal to it. Now you want to close the hole with a bill on the Social Oil Fund. You would like to subsidize a few euros to fill the fuel tank, while it would be much better for people’s energy bill to go down structurally. There needs to be a response from the government.

You say there has been no government all the time. There are here in the hemisphere parliamentarians who complain that they have too little work. It is not because there is no government that Parliament cannot work. That is not a reason not to move forward. There is no reason to sit still, on the contrary.

One fund, Mr. Mayeur, I agree with you, we will also work on it, that will be good. It is necessary, but the resources must be used. Today there is 100 million sleeping money and one local government that appeals to it. It cannot.

As I wanted to say, before you interrupted me, a structural response to energy poverty means: structurally bringing down the energy factors. It is better to start with it today and not wait until next year in the winter, until the weather is cold, so that here for the third time a social fuel fund does not prevail.

In addition to the content, there is also the legal side of the case.

Mr. Versnick wanted to interrupt you.

Mrs. Van der Straeten, I must point out the fact that your arguments about not using the funds are nonexistent. The OCMW of Gent spends annually 700,000 euros from the Vande Lanotte fund.

Mr. Versnick, the OCMW of Gent may do that, but therefore not with the resources provided by the government. Otherwise, the Minister told us wrong things in the committee. In response to Ms. Yalçin, the Minister said that there was one loan in the fund. A local government has used it.

Per ⁇ we should then question the Minister again about the activities of the OCMW of Gent, for example. It can be perfect that you are a good OCMW chairman who acts proactively. I do not question that. There is a lot of money in the funds that is hardly used.

I come to the legal side of the case.

Mr. Speaker, I would like to take the floor since I have been addressed personally. We must make it clear that there are two funds. Mrs. Van der Straeten, the fund to which you refer and which my question to Minister Magnette was concerned with, is the Fund for the Reduction of Global Energy Costs. We are talking about the steel oil fund. We must be careful to bring them together.

It would be good if there is a more structural response to energy poverty or that there is simply a global policy around energy poverty. Then it would be better that the various existing funds – to which the PS, by the way, joins itself – would be merged to conduct a more efficient policy. After all, now it is divided and one can also state that the results are not there.

I would like to decide on the legal side of the case.

Mr. Speaker, I would like to supplement the intervention of Mr. Speaker. Versnick and CD&V.

In fact, it is true that the Energy Cost Reduction Fund should not be confused with the Oil Fund. However, for so many years, forced to forget that we have a Reduction Fund, that we do not use it, we are forced to develop the field of a Oil Fund to help people pay their energy bills. Now it’s said we’re working on merging; it’s almost time! And we will ⁇ support the initiative. But there is no question of confusing or forgetting.

In addition, I questioned Minister Magnette about this famous fund that must have concluded agreements with municipalities and CPAS in order to develop investment aid projects for the most deprived. The answer I received was to say that only one municipality had entered into an agreement, and that we would not be revealed the names of the other municipalities which had entered files and which were therefore likely to be held. Why Why ? Because the Board of Directors of the Energy Cost Reduction Fund considered that confidentiality should be observed in this regard.

This is how this fund is known and used, that is, in nothing!

I now come to the legal or legal side of the matter. A bill was submitted here, which we voted on last time, and in which our group abstained because of fundamental criticism.

Hardly a few months later we have to meet again here, because apparently in the hurry to settle the matter, something was overlooked and the aforementioned law needs to be repaired.

Mr. Mayeur, I can reassure you. We will help you out of need. For the sake of legal certainty, we will approve the repair. We will wait for the next proposals that will effectively address energy poverty. With this proposal, we are still far from home.

Mr. Speaker, Mr. Minister, colleagues, this is actually a big moment, a very big moment. The interim government comes to Parliament with its first law. It has not been easy. It really was a very difficult birth.

I will go deeper into the law which the interim government eventually passed. So it was very difficult. However, we were already in Parliament in September 2007, even long before the official start of the combustion period on 1 September 2007, preparing a bill. PS and sp.a had a draft law ready. I also believe that we have taken a very thorough approach, including an opinion from the Court of Auditors. We worked on the proposal in the committee. Everything was ready; everything was on the rails to make a decision. Political opinions between the factions about what exactly would be decided differed. Nevertheless, everything was ready.

Of course, there was more or less a different political constellation. We then had the Christian Democratic parties and the blue parties that lambed the Parliament, directed by orange blue. They continued to negotiate and continued to try to reach an agreement. We all know how the counter was running at the time and how orange blue laid the parliamentarians lamb here. Therefore, it was not decided. In any case, Orange-Blue did not want to know about the proposal for an extension of the fuel oil fund that was submitted. Orange-Blue would do a lot to try to keep the purchasing power for the people at the level. At least that did not happen then.

So it was simply voted out, without formulating an alternative. Meanwhile, the counter continued to run for orange-blue but also for the people. In the meantime, the burning period was officially introduced on September 1. We already had record prices for fuel oil. It became cold, very cold, and everyone began, of course, to pump their fuel tank full. It was, of course, right and understandable that due to the very high, never seen prices, the suppliers themselves began to negotiate payment plans with the banks. In the meantime, an expansion of the fuel fund continued.

Today there is a birth. There is a first law. I admit, we have had to wait until socialists in this interim government came to see a first decision on the socio-economic level. Furthermore, we have not seen anything in this dossier yet. It is a first, more frightening step. It is also a very small and almost symbolic step. The target group is being expanded. This was also part of our bill and we will approve it with this. I have said this very clearly with respect to our group.

We have also made amendments. Orange-Blue has not wanted to do anything since the beginning of the burning period, from 1 September 2007. Now we are giving you another chance to do something. It seems to me only logical that those who have filled their tank between September and December 2007 can count on the same benefits that are now decided but of which you will approve the entry into force only from January 2008. We offer you with our amendment today the opportunity to give those people, the expansion of the group, the opportunity to still be able to extract from the fuel fuel fund. We therefore propose that this law be enacted with retroactive effect from 1 September 2007, from the beginning of the official combustion period 2007-2008. Everyone has this opportunity again, my colleagues. We brought the amendment to the plenary session. We propose it to you to vote, especially since the budgetary of course has as much as no impact.

It has no impact on the 2008 budget and a negligible impact on the 2007 budget, where you have a deficit of 0.2%.

We are looking forward to the voting behavior. I do not expect much more news than what we have already seen in the committee. In any case, it seems to us logical to approve the amendment on retroactive force. Today we have the opportunity to do that.