Proposition 53K3285

Projet de loi portant définition légale de l'artisan.

General information ¶

Submitted by

PS | SP the Di Rupo government

Submission date

Jan. 13, 2014

Official page

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Status

Adopted

Requirement

Simple

Subjects

craftsman manual worker type of business

Voting ¶

Voted to adopt

CD&V Vooruit LE PS | SP Open Vld MR

Voted to reject

N-VA LDD VB

Abstained from voting

Groen Ecolo

Party dissidents ¶

• Peter Luykx (CD&V) voted to reject.
• Bernard Clerfayt (MR) abstained from voting.
• Olivier Maingain (MR) abstained from voting.

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Discussion ¶

Feb. 12, 2014 | Plenary session (Chamber of representatives)

Full source

Mr. Speaker, Mrs. Minister, colleagues, the present bill sets out the definition of the craftsman.

The craftsman or craftsman company is defined as follows. It is defined as “a natural person or a legal person active in the production, transformation, repair, restoration of objects, the provision of services whose activities relate essentially to manual aspects, to an authentic character, and who develop a certain knowledge focused on quality, tradition, creation or innovation.”

This definition is quite mouthful. Furthermore, the law determines the procedure for and the manner of granting the qualification of craftsman. The establishment of a Commission “Employees”, the establishment of a Council “Employees” and the organization of a register are also set out in this draft.

There were presentations of the ladies Gerkens, Dierick, Vanheste and Emmery. I gave a presentation for the N-VA. Mr. George, Schiltz and Logghe also gave an explanation. There were amendments from Mr. Logghe, Mrs. Gerkens and from the N-VA.

For the full report, I refer to the excellent written version.

Now I would like to go deeper into the N-VA position on this subject.

The N-VA has a heart for craftsmen. They fit perfectly into the N-VA program, when we talk about “who works, saves and invests”. It also reminds us of the guild, where guild members were trained in their profession and after a solid training as a craftsman could be recognized with the title of company. Later they became masters.

We regularly agree with you. We also regularly disagree with you. On this point, however, we fundamentally disagree.

Eleven years ago, in 2003, the Commercial Register was abolished and the Chamber of Employees and Nering was abolished and included in the KBO or Cross Point Bank of Enterprises, which was an administrative simplification.

The formation and training of craftsmen has long been assigned to the Regions and Communities. It is a regional matter. Syntra does an important job. In addition to the abolition, eleven years ago, of the Commercial Register and the Chamber of Employees and Neringen, we just two months ago postponed the access to the appeal to the regions. We thought they were coherent powers packages, but now we see that this new law is once again introducing a register of crafts. A handicraft committee will also be established, which will be responsible for the recognition. The application must also be submitted to that committee. You can appeal to a “Council of Employees”.

Mrs. Minister, from your speech I learned that 270 000 companies and individuals can be considered as craftsmen. They must therefore send a registered letter to that committee for recognition. If the committee does not have the time to respond in a timely manner, the request is rejected. The result is again a lot of bureaucracy. Administrative simplification is far away. Wouldn’t it have been much easier to simply indicate who the craftsman is when registering in the KBO?

The [...]

It is possible.

Mrs. Minister, I also have a few remarks about the great role you assign to the King. When too many people appeal to the category of craftsman, the King can eliminate certain categories. There is already a list of 99 exceptions. However, it is simple: either you comply with the law, or you do not comply with it.

The State Council also has a number of observations, due to its incompatibility with the Service Directive. In fact, you have determined that the King is also responsible for the establishment of a federation of crafts, which, in my opinion, is a violation of the freedom of association.

What I find especially difficult, Mr. Minister, is the finality of this law. It escapes me completely. It is very unclear what its relevance is. Also the State Council says that it does not understand what the new regulation means: “The purpose of this new regulation is vague.”

This law without purpose has been worked for a long time. There were two opinions from the State Council and there were two opinions from the High Council for Self-employed and SMEs. However, the finality remains unclear, in the sense that it is not appropriate to find out what the definition of craftsman actually serves.

In the explanatory note, however, it is stated that, as a result of the legal definition of the concept of ‘public officer’, undertakings carrying out craft tasks are entitled to legal protection. However, it is not clarified what this protection means.

The consequence of the recognition as a craftsman, within the meaning of the draft law, is apparently that only a certified craftsman will be allowed to carry the logo. I am therefore curious how many of the 270 000 craftsmen will submit a dossier for recognition and how many will apply for a renewal of that recognition after six years. These applications will be used to measure the success of this law.

Mrs. Minister, I would like to ask you in a year about the number of craftsmen who have applied for this title. However, that will be difficult, because I think that we both will not be here in the hemisphere anymore.

Mr. Speaker, Mrs. Minister, dear colleagues, our economic fabric consists, in its vast majority, of very small enterprises and SMEs. These companies bring real added value to our economy, which we are unfortunately not always aware of. But they are not the only ones. Hundreds or even thousands of people shape with their hands, every day, materials that they know, they love, to transform them, renovate them or make quality products. What distinguishes craftsmanship from industry activity is its involvement in the development of a certain know-how that is its own, focused on quality, tradition, creation or innovation.

By legally defining the craftsman through the bill proposed by the minister today, legal recognition is granted to companies that carry out craft activities. This label is objectivated by a review and a positive decision made by a committee of artisans. From now on, it will no longer be possible to present itself as a craftsman without respecting its definition, subject to the penalty of being punished by law for misleading practice.

This recognition was long awaited by the different professions of craftsmanship, whether the latter belong to the craftsmanship of the mouth or the art. Therefore, we can only welcome this opportunity that is offered to them to stand out among consumers. We know that the latter are demanding when it comes to knowing the origin, the mode of production, but also the quality of the products they buy.

In a free-trade economic world, this is an excellent initiative in terms of visibility of our products abroad. It is also a tool for distinguishing from industrial products here or elsewhere with similarities such that one might misunderstand.

Our group will therefore support this bill, convinced of the major role that artisans play in the socio-economic landscape of our country.

On behalf of my group, I would like to emphasize that this is a good project. First, it protects the craftsmanship and encourages practices that are interesting for the market; then, it improves the protection of consumers who will be able to sort between what is craftsmanship and what is not.

For these reasons, we welcome the adoption of this project.

Mr. Speaker, Mrs. Minister, dear colleagues, Ecolo-Groen also welcomed the filing of a bill that recognizes and protects the craftsman by giving a definition. Indeed, it is important, on the one hand, to recognize the place, the role and the interest of the craftsmen and, on the other hand, to protect the consumer from counterfeit craft productions.

Nevertheless, it was possible to better define the craftsman and the activity that characterizes him and to protect him more. Therefore, we had submitted amendments in the committee, which I am presenting again today in the plenary session.

Our concerns are diverse. If we want to protect the craftsman – and the consumer – the craftsman must have the possibility to carry out his activity by being protected from a competition, which could be called unfair, made possible by the use of insufficiently precise terms in the law, which is the case in our opinion.

The definition of the craftsman proposed in the law is obviously correct in the sense that it essentially emphasizes manual work and the tradition of knowledge and know-how. However, a concept is absent from this definition. The craftsman is also a worker who continually transmits his knowledge and know-how to his apprentices, to other craftsman-workers in training.

The craftsman is also a person characterized by the full and complete mastery of the manufacturing process. Such a process does not consist of assembling pieces of wood in a certain order and fixing them, but starts from the conceptualization of the product by the craftsman, that is, from his invention, his creation, and then continues with his installation and/or distribution. We thought it was important to include all these elements in the bill.

Especially because the craftsman is also an actor in what is called the short circuit, that is, he uses raw materials and products chosen by his care and, often, among the productions from our regions.

Mrs Gerkens, let us take the example of jewellery: it contains a large number of craftsmen. You say that the craftsman obtains his products in our regions; gold, silver, precious stones, where are they extracted from us?

I said that in general, he uses raw materials from us, he will use, for example, stone from the region and not Chinese stone; to rebuild a carpentry in a historic building, he will endeavour to use the same wood from here. Of course, all this when it is possible.

This dimension seems to me important. Even if gold does not come from us, if one wishes to protect and defend the craft, it remains interesting to know that this element is part of its characteristics. Especially when it comes to controlling the materials it uses.

That is why we insisted, and I continue to do so today, not to limit the number of employees of a small and medium-sized craftsmanship to twenty, but to ten in order to keep this mastery of the process and this ability to transmit its knowledge and know-how. It is different from defending – what I do too – a SME, a larger company, active in the same sector: it should be done under another name of the craftsman.

Another important element to highlight is the fact that the craftsman, in order to access markets, therefore orders, must be recognized and valued as such. If it is constantly confronted with other partners who, thanks to their structures and their way of doing, can afford to offer significantly lower prices, despite its protection under a particular definition, failing to preserve its access to markets and orders, the craftsman will disappear.

That’s why I am re-apposing an amendment, aiming at allowing a person to start an activity through the activity of a self-employed person as a complementary, while imposing a time limit, in order to avoid unfair competition in accessing orders or in accessing the market.

I would also like to add that, if this definition is important, if these provisions are important in defending craftsmanship, the work is not over. Of course, this will be a complementary task. Indeed, not everything can be envisaged in a project that defines the craftsman, but it is clear that arrangements will need to be made to facilitate their access to public procurements, where a part of craft activities is possible.

Clearly, they will also need to be able to partner in order to be able to respond to tenders, which large companies can do more easily, as craftsmen do not have the opportunity to partner in order to respond to a tender involving different types of interventions taking into account each individual’s specificities.

Nevertheless, we will appreciate the effort made in defining the craftsman. Since we think it could have been better and more comprehensive, we are submitting the amendments again. If these are not adopted, we will abstain from voting on the draft considering that we have missed out a way to do better than what is contained in the draft submitted today.

Mr. Speaker, Mrs. Minister, dear colleagues, as the Flemish National People’s Party, we are happy and fully supporting the backbone of Flanders’ economic tissue, namely the SMEs, the self-employed. We have also supported you a number of times in the past when you jumped into the bust for SMEs and self-employed, but this attitude is, of course, not sufficient in itself to support your current bill. We voted against this bill in the committee and we will do so again at tomorrow’s plenary session.

As I said in the committee, a number of legal arguments support our assertion that this is a non-coherent draft, with a number of amendments resulting. If, in the absence of a decision of the Commission “Employees”, the application for recognition of the status of craftsman within a certain period of time is answered negatively, we believe that it is giving a wrong signal. Indeed, a little further in the same bill is stipulated that the withdrawal of the same qualification of craftsman should be motivated, while one should not give the qualification, because one did not respond in time, should not be motivated. In my opinion, this is the world on its head.

Mrs. Minister, our main political objection is that the world is on its head as soon as one looks at your bill in the light of the evolution of the state reforms in this country — as far as our group is concerned, it is rather about state misformations, and you know that. First, these state reforms ensured that the economy and the development of economic activity had to become regional powers. Indeed, many powers were transferred to the West. According to the Flemish Interest, economic policy should be entirely with the regions. What you are doing here, especially trying to quickly settle something federal, we do not endorse.

This bill is a brilliant illustration of the incoherent and confusing distribution of powers between the federal government and the counties. If there are already arguments that advocate a logo to distinguish the real craftsman from the others — there are arguments that advocate it, as I have also said in the committee — then this was a matter that, according to the Flemish Interest, could be perfectly arranged at the Flemish level.

The access to the profession is already entirely in the regions, so why did you necessarily come here with a bill containing a legal definition of the craftsman?

For us, this is an unnecessary federal bill. We will uphold our opposition with conviction.

I will be very brief, of course. We have already answered a number of questions in the committee. Maybe I’ll just go back to the standard of twenty employees. I am reminded that the number, in fact, will not have much to do with the definition. This means that some, three, will not respond to the definition of craftsmanship, while others, more numerous, will respond to it.

Of course, I also do not share some of Ms. Gerkens’ observations. The local market is good, but a number of crafts-level florists are currently exporting, ⁇ to Japan. I think of chocolate or woodwork: the first prize of the artisans 2004, Mr. Vanherck exports its cannes to Japan. The Walloon Region has also offered one to the Pope. So we can radiate! I think that leaving our borders is not necessarily negative.

As I explained to Mrs. Gerkens, I know real craftsmen who employ more than ten employees because they have opened a second store, because they have a workshop where they do everything from A to Z. So the number of employees, for me, has little to do with being a craftsman or not.

But we have already discussed it; Mrs. Gerkens will not be able to convince me; I have no pretension to believe that I will convince her either.

The Minister will not convince me. I think it will not convince many artisans either.

I think we should not confuse a product that is made and exported and the mastery of a process accomplished with men and women here, with the maximum of local materials. It is clear that to make chocolate, it is not the cocoa beans here that are used; but you know very well that there is another way to do when you place yourself in this logic of controlled production.

However, I agree with you on the fact that three workers together do not make a handicraft company. They are not artisans. But there is a definition that is to be put in parallel with the number of workers. One without the other makes no sense.