National Recovery and Resilience Plan: Belgium

Abstract

The funds of the NextGenerationEU recovery plan have been welcomed by the Belgian government as an opportunity to make investments while the state budget was limited as a result of the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic. Social policy measures form only a limited part of the Belgian Recovery and Resilience Plan (RRP) and Belgium’s peculiar government structure – entailing a patchwork of initiatives from the various federal, Flemish, Brussels and Walloon governments – does not necessarily make it easy to develop a coherent approach for the country as a whole. Nevertheless there are some clear priorities, such as labour market inclusion and increasing labour market participation, fostering digital skills and lifelong learning. The social partners’ involvement in developing the plan has been rather minimal. The Commission’s assessment was positive overall, but the lack of major pension reforms might yield a different view in the future. In any case, the fear that the Commission (and Council) would use NextGenerationEU to call for new austerity measures has not come true, which is helped by the fact that the EU is still not returning to a strict application of its fiscal rules.