Drowning in a pool of laws

Since 1 January 2003 the Belgian law gazette can only be read electronically. World's forests must be very thankful to Belgium's government(s), because now a lot of trees is saved from ending up on a book shelf.

Now we've reached 2007, some calculations have been made. In 2006, no less than 76,468 pages have been published in the Belgian law gazette. Only in 2004 the annual compilation was even more bulky, with 87,755 pages published that year. The 2006 result means that there were about 200 pages published each day, or 1,400 a week. There's only one conclusion that can be drawn from these facts, namely that Belgium's legislators urgently need a pill against legislative diarrhoea.

There is a legal maxim - which already exists since the time of the Roman Empire - that goes as follows: "Nobody is supposed not to know the law." So we, Belgians, are supposed to know those 76,468 pages of law gazette almost by heart. It would be already a miracle if you can download this gigantic volume of pages on your computer!

As Belgium's federal government has got a State Secretary of Administrative Simplification - i.e. Vincent Van Quickenborne; member of the Flemish Liberal (what's in a name...) Party VLD - he was able to comment on this new facts. To his opinion, the amount of rules in Belgium has decreased in 2006 despite the increase of pages in the law gazette. Still according to Mr Van Quickenborne's opinion, the increase is due to the many translations that need to be published (Belgium has got three official languages, i.e. Dutch, French and German). Secondly, as Belgium is a federal state, the legislative documents of the regional and communal governments also appear in the Belgian law gazette. Thirdly, in order to simplify or abolish a law or an existing rule, you need to create a new rule. And fourthly, a lot of Belgian legislation is no more than the conversion of European directives into national legislation (maybe we can abandon with that foolish Union that brings us more eurocratism and corporatism instead of freedom). And that's why the Belgian law gazette grows every year fatter and fatter (by the way: if you accumulate the amount of pages created since 2000, you reach the number of 433,000 !!)

However, the (Flemish) Union of Independent Entrepreneurs (Unizo or Unie van Zelfstandige Ondernemers in Dutch) was astonished by the statements made by Mr Van Quickenborne. Karel Van Eetvelt - Unizo's chief spokesman - laughed at Mr Van Quickenborne, and said that a lot of entrepreneurs indeed suffer from Belgium's overregulation. The administrative cost for Belgium's entrepreneurs is estimated at €10 billion a year! Other surveys indicate that a downfall of one quarter of regulations can boost the economy by 1.4%. Our policy makers certainly need to reflect this number.

We already talked about the quantity of new regulations. What about its quality? Well, we can observe some cases that show the inefficiency of the Belgian system. In the law gazette's edition of 15 December 2006 (half a month ago), for example, there appeared a ministerial act dealing with the organization of the Finance Ministry. The issue isn't that peculiar, but the date when the act was signed is: 10 October 1979!!! This means that it took more than 27 years to be officially published!! A remarkable detail: the minister who signed this act was the christian democrat Gaston Geens... who rests in peace for already four years and a half! Another example: in the end of 2005, Rudy Demotte - the federal Minister of Social Affairs and member of the Walloon Socialist Party PS - promised the Belgian palliative centers to give them more financial backing. But in return, the conditions in order to get those funds were about to be strenghtened. What kind of new conditions this may be, would be read later in the Belgian law gazette. On 20 December 2006 the owners of the palliative centers knew to which conditions thay had to live up. It's quite obvious that this kind of situations can only happen in Belgium.

And it is even more obvious that Belgium and its governments have to stop playing 'Big Brother' all the time, trying to control the whole society with an army of new regulations. An introduction of the American system in which some laws contain an 'extinguish clause' could be very helpfull. With this clause, laws disappear after a certain determined time unless it's necessary to keep the law. This clause has been implemented in the famous anti-terror regulations of president Bush. Another idea would be to revise the whole serie of Belgian lawbooks page by page, and eliminate those acts that are really too stupid to maintain. But that will be a hard game to play, since the Belgian law gazette already exists since 1845. When will the new generation of politicians stand up to do this job in the name and fate of freedom?

Belgian corporatism on the move

It isn't that funny at all to be an employer in Belgium. As the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) pointed out in a special report in March 2006, the Belgian labour costs are the highest of all OECD member states. It's therefore interesting to look at the wage negotiations between the ten main "social partners" (representatives of both employers' organisations as trade unions) which took place Thursday last week.

These interprofessional talks are organised each two years, and try to reach an agreement between the social partners on social issues such as pensions, innovation and R&D-investments. But the core issue of these talks remains how much wages in (privately-owned) companies may increase over the next two years. In the early automn of this year, the Central Council for Trade and Industry - which is more or less a socio-economic thinktank - suggested the social partners should wages increase by only 5.5% for the period 2007-2008 in order to stay competitive with the outside world. Last Thursday, however, the social partners agreed on a basic-wage rate of only 5%. So, is there sufficient reason for Belgian industry to uncork the champagne bottle?

Unfortunately the answer is no. The Flemish Network of Enterprises (Vlaams Netwerk van Ondernemingen or VOKA in Dutch) - which isn't an official social partner, however - made serious objections to this basic-wage rate which is too high in VOKA's opinion. According to VOKA it will not be the ordinary employee who will benefit from this wage rate, but the Belgian government. VOKA calculated that a 5%-wage raise will cost Belgian industry almost €8 billion. However, the employees will only get €2.8 billion. The remaining €5.2 billion will flow to the Treasury, because of the high contributions for the expensive social security system that have to be paid.

The agreement that has been reached isn't a good thing at all, since Belgian companies lost almost 20% of the market share in international trade since 1999. Raising wages by almost 5% over the next two years could be fatal to our companies. And nobody can guarantee that wages will raise by 'barely' 5%, since Belgium has got also another unique feature in its social negotiation model: automatic wage indexation. Due to this malicious system, wages are automatically raised when consumer prices are too high. Even when there is a basic-wage rate - in this case 5% - it could very well be exceeded. It's one of the main causes of the high labour costs in Belgium. Together with the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg, Belgium is the only country in Europe where this system is maintained.

At last, there is one other unique - but perverted - thing in the Belgian social negotiation model, namely the fact that these are interprofessional talks. This means that the social partners hardly take any account of the fact that there are many industrial sectors. It could be possible that the food industry is very competitive, while the textile industry is losing ground on the international market. In that case, it would be more rational to restrain a raise of wages in the textile sector, and to be more generous in the food industry. But due to the interprofessional negotiations, this is almost impossible. And nor does this interprofessional negotiation model take any notice of the big differences between the Flemish (with more employment in the privately-owned sector and a rather big development of the service market) and Walloon (with a high rate of unemployment (18.4%) , more employment in the public sector and an economic focus on old industries) economy. It would be a good thing if this were the last gathering of the Belgian social partners.