Proposition 53K0835

Projet de loi modifiant la loi du 21 mars 1991 portant réforme de certaines entreprises publiques économiques et la loi du 19 avril 2002 relative à la rationalisation du fonctionnement et de la gestion de la Loterie Nationale.

General information ¶

Authors

Ecolo Ronny Balcaen
Groen Stefaan Van Hecke
LE Christophe Bastin
Open Vld Sabien Lahaye-Battheu
Vooruit David Geerts

Submission date

Dec. 16, 2010

Official page

Visit

Status

Adopted

Requirement

Simple

Subjects

management game of chance public sector

Voting ¶

Voted to adopt

Groen CD&V Vooruit Ecolo LE PS | SP Open Vld MR VB

Abstained from voting

∉ N-VA LDD

Party dissidents ¶

• Peter Luykx (CD&V) abstained from voting.
• Bert Schoofs (VB) abstained from voting.

Contact form ¶

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Discussion ¶

Dec. 13, 2012 | Plenary session (Chamber of representatives)

Full source

I am referring to my written report.

From time to time, it is interesting to explain to young children what we do in Parliament. I tell them that I am here to solve problems. However, in the context of the text for voting, it is difficult to explain how this text can solve the problems or improve the world.

We note that trains do not drive on time and that there are many problems with the post. There are 101 questions in the Infrastructure Committee. All these problems are then brought back to the way management contracts are drawn up. As a solution, it is proposed that Parliament should be involved. Then we can contribute our little stone and we can provide for things that are not set forth today.

We fully agree with the principle of publicity of administration and participation. In practice, the state spends a number of things on more or less autonomous companies. To a certain extent they are let go, even though at its head councils of governments are filled with people who, thanks to their political preference, receive gifts.

A state-owned company must essentially do what the government and society expect from it, and it must do so in its best capacity. The opposite seems to be true again. The management contracts that the board of directors prepares – with your people in it, not ours – and that the minister eventually signs are not good enough. We need to participate. For this we need a law again.

With the principle I can live. A law is a question sign. We must always ask ourselves what means can solve which problem. In the bill, which has been twisted by the lack of this majority, it is not stated that Parliament has participation in management contracts. It does not even stipulate that advisory bodies can issue a binding opinion. It is only stated that they must do so six months in advance. The Minister shall report to the Chamber within a month after the Board of Directors has approved the management contract.

If we see what report we receive today about the progress of, for example, the plans around the restructuring of the NMBS Group, then we can already imagine what that report will be.

Colleagues, it will not surprise you that the expected effect of this law – which has been so heavily discussed in the Infrastructure Committee – is zero, zero, nada. Welcome to Belgium. I suspect that tomorrow the train passenger, the customer of the post office or the lottery player will rise joyfully, because his problem has already been solved.

Mr. Speaker, Mr. Minister, dear colleagues, I will not be as black as my colleague, because there were no hectic debates but rather constructive debates. Everyone has their own views of parliamentary debates!

Our colleague’s original text contained two objectives: first, allowing a public debate on how autonomous public companies perform their public service tasks, and second, encouraging the emergence of recommendations from parliament before the negotiation of management contracts concluded between the company and the federal state.

For the Socialist Group, any initiative to improve the functioning of public enterprises is a good initiative. However, in the analysis, the draft law proved difficult to apply. Instead of opening the debate, the authors took the risk of closing it. The initial proposal would have resulted in transforming a negotiation between a minister for the tutelage of public enterprises, public enterprises and the Parliament, into a triumvirate in which the Parliament’s prior recommendations could parasitize these negotiations, or even put an end to them.

Nevertheless, some objectives of this proposal, including better involvement and better information of the Parliament, were praised. That is why we have tried to find a solution and a compromise without hectic discussions. There is still the possibility for parliament to correctly inform itself, to question the minister and to submit legislative proposals. So, dear colleague Vandeput, our Parliament still has tools.

Negotiations with autonomous public enterprises should be allowed to continue. This autonomy was voted in 1991; it allowed companies to grow and respond to the liberalization of all sectors. And that, rather correctly with regard to Belgacom and La Poste, the SNCB with difficulties that we are trying to solve, but not everything is settled through a management contract. That is why we have tried to find a compromise.

We submitted amendments with all majority parties and Ecolo-Groen to try to find a balance between the indispensable information of parliament and the necessary capacity of a minister to negotiate with a public enterprise.

This amended bill will promote better dialogue during the renewal of the management contract linking the federal state and public enterprises and will allow parliament to play its role. This role can be great in the debate about the public service missions we need to pursue.

Mr. Speaker, first of all, I must remind you that the principle of this bill, which was co-signed by Mr. Van Hecke, Geerts, Bastin and Mrs Lahaye-Battheu, was to trigger a parliamentary debate prior to the conclusion of management contracts between autonomous public enterprises and the state.

In addition, by voting this text, we implement one of the recommendations of the Buizingen Commission, according to which "the House of Representatives has the firm will to initiate the dialogue with the Minister responsible for the elaboration of management contracts with the companies of the SNCB Group, thus actively contributing to the preparation of these contracts". So, Mr. Vandeput, the vote on this proposal will allow to go further in the implementation of the recommendations of the special committee on rail safety. This seems to me to be an important element.

Mr. Balkans, let us be clear, we also want participation and involvement in the establishment of the management agreements. However, that is not the essence. The essence is that the Minister reports within the month, after approval by the Board of Directors of the autonomous public company. No opening is made regarding amendment, amendment or anything. The power of Parliament in drawing up the management contract shall be reduced to zero. The Parliament will only be able to take note of the management contract and thus you will de facto become a participant in a decision that you may not even agree with.

Mr. Vandeput, this is a public debate that precedes the conclusion. It is about being informed about the draft management contract. I agree with you: the arrangement that will require the Minister to submit the draft management contract to Parliament has lost its substance in the course of the committee’s work. I acknowledge it, but I must now see that it keeps the principles and that we have, from this text, the power to implement a real public debate.

The text retains its relevance, namely the organization of a debate on public tasks that are those of autonomous public enterprises. The arrangement will allow concrete, if there is the political will of the groups, to contribute to it; it will allow to feed the negotiation between the autonomous public enterprises and the Minister of tutel, while respecting the status of autonomous public enterprise and the role of each in this matter.

Therefore, we now have the means to innovate in this matter around this pivotal moment that is the presentation by the Minister, in commission, of a draft management contract. An assessment of the past can be provided, which the User Advisory Committee will be invited to do with regard to the SNCB, for example. It will also be necessary to listen – it is my opinion – to the representatives of the users, those and those who, every day, are customers of these public companies, and who have things to say.

Of course, we can restrict this debate between the Minister and Parliament in our Infrastructure Committee. Nothing prevents us from working with the hearing of the different user committees in particular and with the representatives of the users; they have already manifested themselves and expressed their satisfaction to see this device being voted today. We are therefore opening the door to a greater publicity of the discussions around management contracts.

There was a shortage, Mr. Vandeput. Today, this was done between the minister and the autonomous public enterprise, without real parliamentary intervention. Parliament’s intervention does not consist of negotiating with the minister, but the way is still there to make recommendations and have a broad public debate on the missions of public enterprises.

In this sense, I thank the colleagues who co-signed the initial proposal and those who allowed us to reach its compromise and accomplishments in our work. I am convinced that we are filling a shortage in the development of public policies. This is also, Mr. Vandeput, a way to improve everyday life, which you mentioned at the beginning of the intervention.

Shuttle organizations are demanding and they can, today, use this provision as a lever, for greater discussion and for a much broader public debate.

Mr. Speaker, Mr. Minister, we will soon approve the proposals presented, even though we are only a cool lover of them. Many of the participants are members of the special rail safety committee. Many people have experienced the consequences of failure in management agreements to follow, fulfill, or adjust a number of essential elements.

The dramatic disaster in Buizingen was for many the drop that caused the cage to flow over. It has been shown that many people in the existing structures — a management committee where the Council of Ministers often delegated people with the right competencies or the right party card, as well as all sorts of advisory committees — often did not do their job. They carried from one meeting to another and preferably had as many titles as possible on their name card, in order then to prove themselves in other services in the party channels. In fact, those same persons did not possess the appropriate competencies to sit there.

As regards the management agreements themselves, we had to conclude in Parliament that, when we asked about them or were asked by the citizen, we had very little control over them. We could question the Minister and the carefully listening Minister always answered the prepared questions, but there was not much interaction between the management agreements and the Parliament so far.

As for Buizingen and rail safety, that had very dramatic consequences. In other companies, it may have remained limited to a number of very nefaste decisions or just to not making certain decisions.

In the first place, I deeply regret that Parliament must submit a bill and a proposal for a resolution. So far, the government has not taken the initiative to come to Parliament itself in advance with a management agreement and to listen to our recommendations, even if that would have been the logic of things. The possible pros and cons of the recommendations of the management committee or the role of the government commissioner could also be addressed.

No, we must first key those laws ourselves, because the autonomy of the companies does not allow the minister to intervene. In fact, the Minister still has all the elements in his hands to update, sharpen or adjust a number of matters through the management agreement.

The Parliament can take a step forward today, but I remain a cool lover in this regard, because I regret that the government itself has not taken initiative in advance and that we have nothing enforceable in our hands. After all, we have few concrete elements and democratically legitimate recommendations that have been approved in the committee or, where appropriate, in the plenary session, and which we can require the Minister to include in his management agreement. Will the Minister now take our recommendations into account? In the end, he still has free play.

On the one hand, the positive thing is that we have a little more involvement, that we can nurture the illusion that we have a grip on the management agreements, that we can finally agree and that we can finally direct something and something. On the other hand, the Minister remains in charge of his own management agreement. This is a pity, especially for the initiators of this bill. I am thinking of the colleague of Ecolo who has done the necessary for it, and of the various colleagues of the majority who have gladly put their name under it.

It is regrettable that no further progress has been made and no more tools have been provided to Parliament to effectively weigh on the management agreement. In fact, these are good adjustments. There is a deadline within which everything must be done and in what way, but ultimately the minister still does what he wants. He does not even have a motivation obligation if he wants to deviate from the recommendations.

That there is participation is good. We go a little further on the road, but everything remains limited. So my enthusiasm is a little undercold.

Mr. Veys, I have listened carefully to your speech. I leave it to your account if you say that one is taking a big step forward today. At the end of your speech, you said that we are taking part in this story. Let me, together with you and the colleagues present, review the text.

“No later than one month after receipt of the draft for the new management contract proposed by the management committee of the public undertaking, the Minister shall report on this to the legislative chambers.”

Where do you see participation? Where do you see, in some way, a possibility for Parliament to influence and intervene in this regard?

Mr. Veys, what is being changed here is just the time. We might now have a draft, while we could only have a signed report afterwards.

For us, this is not enough. We do not join in the feasible, in the feasible, and we will abstain.

I understand the skepticism of the colleague of N-VA, but the same applies to the parliamentary questions we ask in a committee. In the end, the minister answers what he wants. To what extent do we participate in the policy of the Minister and in the policy letters he submits in advance? He brings his story and has the support of the majority, whether it’s about management agreements or anything else.

It is a fact that he is now obliged to come to Parliament with this, while it was previously at the grace of the Minister if we had to ask the same parliamentary questions again.

Parliamentary questions also do not engage, but now we still have a slightly stronger tool in our hands to be able to question him about it, to listen to the motives and to hear why no other options are taken. The Minister is asked what to do with the recommendations. He still does what he wants, but we are a step further.

For that reason, I still remain an undercover lover.

Ladies and gentlemen, I will be brief. We have actually signed the original text of colleague Balkan. Mr. Vandeput, I admit that we eventually reached a compromise. In my opinion, there is nothing wrong with landing with a text that involves an improvement.

We concluded a compromise because we had come to the conclusion that, in the light of the 1991 legislation, we had to come to the powers of the executive and the legislative power and that there were legal objections to approve the original text thus.

Today I would like to express my thanks to colleague Balcaen for the openness he has shown to reach a final product.

I agree that this is not the big leap forward, but it is an important step in the right direction. Let us hope that the evaluation will eventually – and ⁇ in my case – allow us to continue with the discussions that the Parliament can organise on this subject.

I have one point to add to a debate that has been very nutritious, both here and in the committee. In reality, the difficulty was to find the right balance between the need to have a parliamentary debate, in advance and not once everything is decided, and the fact not to put on time constraints such that they would have hampered the action of the government which must be able to negotiate these management contracts in useful time to avoid the vacuum between two periods. With the debate that took place and the amendments that were proposed, this balance is perfectly found.

I have the impression that balance, or balance in Dutch, has different meanings for different people.