Projet de loi fixant le contingent de l'armée pour l'année 2019.
General information ¶
- Submitted by
- MR Swedish coalition
- Submission date
- Nov. 20, 2018
- Official page
- Visit
- Status
- Adopted
- Requirement
- Simple
- Subjects
- armed forces
Voting ¶
- Voted to adopt
- Groen CD&V Vooruit Ecolo LE PS | SP DéFI ∉ Open Vld N-VA MR PP
- Abstained from voting
- PVDA | PTB
Contact form ¶
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Discussion ¶
Dec. 13, 2018 | Plenary session (Chamber of representatives)
Full source
President Siegfried Bracke ⚙
Mrs Bellens, rapporteur, refers to the written report.
Julie Fernandez Fernandez PS | SP ⚙
Dear colleagues, I will speak briefly from my bank. I would like to say a few words about the text that is proposed to us today. We will, of course, support this technical project, but it is an opportunity to criticize once again the human resource policy pursued by this defence government.
According to the press, the staff of the Belgian Defence has already passed below the threshold of 25,000 military personnel envisaged by the strategic vision. This is shown in this chart of the Defense Administration, which illustrates how much this government has conducted a detrimental policy also at the level of the Defense personnel. A picture is better than long speeches. We see there clearly a crash in the number of candidates attracted to a military career during this legislature. Today, you already bite your fingers, but it may already be too late, so the violations of military status have been strong in recent years.
I would like to remind that this government had drastically limited commitments to make savings but also that even today, all soldiers are engaged under fixed-term status. These are two bad decisions that the army will take a long time to stand up to. Indeed, the Regalian function that is Defense must rely on the essential and primary resource: those men and those women who make up it. Their vision of Defence is more than outcast, as illustrated by an internal inquiry conducted last year within the department.
It is also evident that the decisions that were made under this government, to unilaterally extend the military career by seven years, to resort to outsourcing to all-va, and to permanently question the achievements of the status of the military, are not foreign to this historical friction within the department.
The new budget cuts are also not. This law, and especially this chart, illustrates once again that the criticism of my group was largely justified, and this from the first day. I take this advantage to wish Mr. Reynders good luck if he gets confidence on Tuesday.
President Siegfried Bracke ⚙
There is no other intervention and I don’t think this requires a reaction.