Proposition 54K2811

Projet de loi modifiant la loi du 6 août 1931 établissant des incompatibilités et interdictions concernant les ministres, anciens ministres et ministres d'État, ainsi que les membres et anciens membres des Chambres législatives, en ce qui concerne le cumul d'indemnités publiques.

General information ¶

Authors

CD&V Franky Demon, Vincent Van Peteghem
Ecolo Jean-Marc Nollet
Groen Kristof Calvo
LE Catherine Fonck
MR Gautier Calomne
N-VA Brecht Vermeulen
Open Vld Katja Gabriëls
PS | SP André Frédéric

Submission date

Nov. 29, 2017

Official page

Visit

Status

Adopted

Requirement

Simple

Subjects

Member of Parliament multiple office holding overlapping of income elective office Statute for Members of the Parliament Speaker of Parliament

Voting ¶

Voted to adopt

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

Abstained from voting

PVDA | PTB PP

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Discussion ¶

June 7, 2018 | Plenary session (Chamber of representatives)

Full source

The rapporteur, Mr Van Biesen, refers to his written report.

Following the work of the Political Renewal Working Group, several bills have been drawn up and referred to the Committee for the Revision of the Constitution and the Reform of the Institutions. This committee has been very active in the last few weeks, although it is not always possible to reach conclusions.

The first layer that was approved in this Chamber concerns the asset and mandate declaration. Special attention is paid to transparency and control by the Court of Auditors. After this loop, today, the first part of a double loop is about the financial decumulation, better known as the 150 % rule.

The first part of this two-layer clarifies what should be understood by public mandates. The second part will later specify that special parliamentary functions also fall under this rule.

The law of 1931 already determines the maximum amount of remuneration, betting and present payments that one may receive in connection with the accompanying exercise of a public mandate, function or office of a political nature. According to the Act of 1931, this ceiling must be limited to half the amount of the parliamentary allowance, which cannot be exceeded. In order to make that conclusive, the law also includes the extension of the scope of the legislation to the declaration of assets and mandate.

For example, a number of new cases will now be covered by the 150 % rule, namely the remuneration resulting from the exercise of functions in board of directors, advisory boards and executive committees. This rule applies to three categories that I will not list here. The entry into force coincides with the complete renewal of the Chamber.

The same exercise was made with the special law for the federal chambers and the states, so that it is uniform for all other parliaments.

Colleagues, in particular, this means that it is necessary to report to the President of Parliament when a person receives remuneration in addition to his parliamentary mandate as a result of the exercise of a public mandate. If the total remuneration increases from above 150 % of the parliamentary bet, it is reduced. Today only clarifies which public mandates fall within the scope of the law.

Now that the first part of the two-layer of the financial decumulation precedes, I hope to explain the second part to you very soon. I had hoped to be able to approve it already in the Committee for the Revision of the Constitution and the Reform of the Institutions, but this has unfortunately not happened yet. However, we remain optimistic and progress, even though it sometimes resembles the procession of Echternach.

These measures should ensure that we re-establish confidence in the political order. That’s why people chose us.

I want to give a small explanation. Some colleagues feared that I would talk here for a long time. Well, I have provided the proof: I can speak out of this speech stand for less than thirty minutes. Mr. Frédéric, you are probably very satisfied with that.

I would like to thank Mr Vermeulen for the quality of his speech, but above all for his concisity. This is not common on my part, but I like to do it in plenary session. Mr Vermeulen, you are progressing in this regard. There is no need to change the rules of the Chamber. You adapt, and that’s important.

My group will of course support this text because it has co-signed it. I recall, however, that it is the result of a work that has lasted a year and a half, and for which the conclusions of the political renewal group were filed almost a year ago. Some of us have therefore repeatedly expressed ourselves to try to move things forward. We thought we were in a hurry, but very slowly.

As you have just specified, the declaration of wealth and income both public and private on the website of the Court of Auditors is a decision that we have already taken almost unanimously in the House. Today, we support a number of texts. The total income is limited to 150%, all inclusive as stated. We will approve the text with pleasure.

It may be difficult for the public opinion to find it in the way we concrete all the agreements made, even if not everyone finds all their aspirations in the outcome. The proposal contained 70 to 80 recommendations. We take decisions in the Constitutional Revision Committee. Some of them have to come to the House of Representatives. Some belong to the governance committee. Indeed, one of the first decisions was to implement the reduction of the compensation of the chairman of the House, which was not banal. It would be interesting to ask the services to make available to us, as well as to the public, a cadastral of all that has been and will be accomplished, accompanied by deadlines, so that at the end of this legislature, we should not find that we have forgotten or not had the time to vote on one or the other of our texts.

In conclusion, we approve all the texts that are subject to our approval.

Mr. Speaker, I just want to supplement. Indeed, I received today from the Secretary a overview table with the list of pending proposals in the Committee on the Rules of Procedure and in the Committee on the Revision of the Constitution. However, it is true that the table does not cover the full number of recommendations.

Therefore, I have asked my own employees to supplement the overview a little more and again ask – I will still ask an official question for this – to make sure that it is also arranged on the basis of the recommendations and that we can get a second table of all that.

I just want to communicate that. Meanwhile, the first table has been published and transmitted to the members of the Committee on Home Affairs.

I add that the Chamber services are working on what Mr. Frédéric calls the "catastrophe". As soon as this cadastre is rebus sic stantibus ready, it will be transmitted to all members of the Chamber and especially to the members of the working group.

Mr. Speaker, dear colleagues, the many scandals related to governance and ⁇ within the intercommunal Publifin have highlighted some abusive practices. These excesses often linked – it is important to remember – to remuneration have shocked the population, rightly. I think, dear colleagues, that here too, we have all been struck and this has clearly deformed the image of political action as a whole.

Very logically, we have formed, as the two previous speakers have said, a working group to drive this political renewal. Concrete reforms proved indispensable to prevent such deviations from happening again, and we have the opportunity today to concrete approval of some of them.

We worked, majority and opposition, as part of a constructive collaboration. Sometimes the discussions were lively but they were also dense during those few months and brought fruit. A few weeks ago, we adopted here in the session, a first part of texts specifically related to transparency and more specifically to mandate and heritage declarations.

Today, it is a new set of three proposals that we are happy to be able to vote on. I will not return to the details of these proposals, given that this has already been largely done by my colleague, Brecht Vermeulen. On behalf of my group, I would just like to say that we are convinced of the positive effect of these reforms. They are likely to strengthen an important aspect for our group, namely transparency, but they will also offer greater clarity and readability to all citizens.

I would also like to point out that these new rules, in a way, establish a principle of moderation that we consider essential. Political life and public action is not the hunt for paid mandates and lucrative presence tokens. It seems to us that the 150% rule is a clearly identifiable tag by and for all and all. This is a good signal that we are sending today. Things change and the lines move. This signal will translate into reality from next year, more specifically from the next legislature.

Step by step, we are laying the foundations for a different governance, for a healthier management of the public thing. However, our work will not end with the adoption of these texts. In the coming weeks and months, we will have to go to meet the citizens. We must be able to explain to them our reforms and do pedagogical work. This is, in our opinion, the only way to restore the confidence of the population in our democratic system to which we are here, all and all, deeply attached.

I thank you for your attention.

Mr. Speaker, the Working Group on Political Renewal reached 66 conclusions that were unanimously adopted, which is of course positive. In addition to transparency on mandates and fees, there are rules for subsidiary functions and measures to make the Chamber more transparent and resilient. However, our work is absolutely not finished. We therefore urge that the recommendations continue to be translated into bills, regulatory amendments and Bureau decisions in the coming months. Then we can finish that story in the spring, a year after the start, in the same constructive atmosphere. For different conclusions, we must effectively strike another tooth.

There has been a statutory ceiling on the cumulation of public fees for a long time. That determines the maximum amount one may receive from secondary functions of a public mandate of a political nature. With the present proposals, secondary functions in board of directors, advisory boards and executive committees are also covered by the so-called 150 % rule. These are functions in intercommunals and legal entities in which the government has the power to speak.

We hope to continue in the same constructive atmosphere. We will work constructively to quickly reach a final point in the story of political renewal, with a lot of regulatory adjustments.

Mr. Speaker, colleagues, in line with the majority of interventions of my predecessors, our group also expresses its support for this bill, one of the fruits of the Working Group Political Renewal. This working group has achieved a number of successes and progress, but there is still a lot on the menu for future work.

The present proposal is good and important, but in fact was also somewhat the evidence itself. There was already a 150% wage ceiling and that will now be better and more generally applied. So I would like to again express our support for this, but at the same time I emphasize that this was actually the evidence itself.

Furthermore, I would like to say that in our case, the measure could have taken place immediately. Given the evidence, this measure could be implemented immediately. Permit me to say that I can hardly understand the resistance to it. Apparently, it was very difficult to digest for some colleagues, while it is actually the logic itself.

I would like to remind you of this, Mr. Speaker, because colleagues from other occupational groups sometimes formulate clear and comprehensive proposals that need to be implemented immediately, while they seem to demonstrate a little more restraint for themselves.

This is a good measure. It is also an obvious measure.

Finally, I agree with colleague Frédéric’s concern about the outcome of our conclusions. I also look at you, Mr. President. Providing the overview table is not an unnecessary luxury. We have formulated quite a few recommendations. I think it would be a good ambition to implement it completely, or almost completely, before the recess.

Among other things, I think of the reform of the petition law and other things that need to be approved.

I would like to have that overview table here quickly, so that we can see with the different factions how we can accelerate, or rather, no longer slow. Our group will now approve this, as we like to see the political stake and consider such reforms important.

At this time last year, we concluded the work of our Political Renewal Working Group with a number of recommendations.

Mr. Vermeulen, I hear you now say that you, with the services, have prepared an overview that has been checked by the employees. I also hear that this has already been distributed to the members of the Committee on Internal Affairs. But maybe I misunderstood that?

It would be nice that all members of the Political Renewal Working Group, including the small groups that were present there, could get this overview.

I think the current proposal for political renewal is a good proposal. We need a fairer policy. We need to ensure greater transparency, especially when it comes to fees.

I must say that I can contribute to colleague Calvo that it would have been better if we put these measures into effect immediately. There is, I think, a consensus that this will happen after the next renewal of this Chamber.

Thus, I can agree to the first proposal, the proposal for the entry into force of the new regulation for the House, but I do not understand the timing of the entry into force for the counties. If the regulation comes into effect immediately, everyone will fall under it right from today, which is the best option. For the Chamber, however, the reasoning is logical to apply the regulation from the moment the composition of the Chamber is renewed. However, the authors of the proposals assume that this applies at the same time in the German-speaking Community and the other counties. We also made this note in a proposal that is now being discussed in the Committee for the Revision of the Constitution. I can understand that the majority does not agree to an immediate entry into force, but the two other proposals attached to it, in particular the special law and the proposal concerning the German-speaking Community, must enter into force at the time of the renewal of the composition of the respective regional parliaments. Members of the Chamber will be given the opportunity to work under the existing system up to the renewed composition of the Board. Why does this not apply in a similar degree to the provinces? Based on the debates this afternoon, I am not quite sure if the Chamber will sing the song in its current composition until 2019. Last week there were questions about the remaining ministers. It is therefore perfectly possible that the composition of the Chamber renews much earlier. Therefore, I advocate for the state parliaments to enter into force at a different time.

At the same time, I would like to point out that we are actually interfering with the provinces through the proposals presented now. In principle, the last two proposals would not have to be covered here at all. We should actually delegate decision-making powers on such matters to the provinces within the framework of constitutional autonomy. Apparently we have not yet reached that point.

At least we have submitted amendments to regulate the entry into force. I have seen that a colleague has submitted an amendment to transfer the right of self-determination to the provinces and that should, in my opinion, apply to all the provinces. I hope we can find support for these adjustments.

Mr. Speaker, the previous speaker has already mentioned this, and I can also refer to the constructive cooperation in the Working Group Political Renewal.

I have heard the Chairman of this already in the Committee on the Rules of Procedure say that a proportionate distribution was applied among all the political groups for the proposals to be submitted, on which a consensus was then reached. Well, the previous speaker correctly noted that the small factions are always overlooked.

With regard to the present proposals, of course, we agree with them in terms of content. You know this during the discussions we have held on this subject. We will ⁇ support the limitation of the cumulation of public charges.

However, I have the same comment as the previous speaker. Our assembly does not have to play the stepmother of the subparliaments. It is up to them to develop a similar, equally good arrangement, and it is not up to us to impose it on them. Therefore, I have submitted an amendment in that sense to break with the Belgian custom of imposing, as a mother-in-law, a rule on the counties. This can also be arranged differently. Let the provinces themselves decide what their elected people wish to see imposed or not in this regard.

We would like to give the counties as much autonomy as possible with regard to their own functioning and the status of their members, including the cumulation of public fees, as regulated in the present proposals.

I have submitted an amendment aimed at allowing Flanders to decide autonomously on this issue, and I will count on your support later.

I cannot say that these proposals go in the wrong direction, but they do not go far enough. As I explained to the working group Political Renewal, the PTB defends a model of political income that I will call model 1, 2, 3 linked to the Belgian median salary. A salary equal to once the median salary is the rule that PTB elected members apply to themselves. People’s PTB elected people must live like the people and we think that when you don’t live as you think, you end up thinking as you live.

Twice the median salary is the parliamentary compensation we offer to members of the House of Representatives. This is about half of the current salary. We also propose the abolition of non-taxable deductions. This is even higher than if we respect the Constitution! As you probably know, Article 66 of the Constitution allocates to members of the House of Representatives an annual compensation of 12,000 francs. With this, and even taking into account inflation, we are still significantly below.

Three times the median salary is the maximum ceiling that we claim for all political men and women of this country, all functions confused (ministry, special functions, etc.)

Compared to 150% of the proposal, we are half of it. Another difference, in our proposal, is the ceiling that also takes into account possible private remuneration of the beneficiary.

We submitted an amendment introducing the ceiling of "three times the median salary". I am afraid that the amendment will not gain a great success in the assembly, which should justify our abstention. I fear this in particular by reference to Louis Michel’s remarks last year, which are quite noticeable remarks. I will refresh your memory by quoting it to you: "Limiting the parliamentary to a paid term of 4,800 euros net per month? You will get a Parliament cut off from reality, populated by public officials and teachers and deserted by the world of business and lawyers.”

I think this disregard for the people is quite significant of the gap that exists between the political class and the population. But obviously, when one pursues an austerity policy, it is easier to get workers paid while having themselves a salary much higher than the average employee.