This Monday, November 24, a strike by public transport and railway workers opened three days of social protests in Belgium against the government’s socio-economic reforms. Launched on the initiative of three major trade unions, it is embroiled in a dispute against the centre-right government led by Prime Minister Bart De Wever and his leaders. “social damage”This movement was organized in three stages. This Monday, the Belgian rail operator, SNCB, had planned for traffic to be limited to one of two trains, or even one of three trains depending on the line. Some Eurostars connecting Brussels to Paris have also been cancelled. Then, all public services – schools, kindergartens, administration and even hospitals – were affected by the strike on Tuesday. Before the inter-professional strike on Wednesday.
If the extent of the disruption to public services cannot be ascertained, the strike will certainly have a real impact on air traffic: no commercial flights will take off on Wednesday from Brussels-Zaventem and Charleroi, with the companies managing both airports anticipating high levels of strikes among staff responsible for security checks.
Belgium has one of the worst debt levels in the eurozone, along with Greece, Italy and France, a situation often described as follows “disaster” by the Prime Minister. In power since February, the Flemish conservatives have demanded massive austerity measures from the country and have put on the agenda an unprecedented series of structural reforms regarding the liberalization of the labor market and pensions. But after ten months in office, he has largely praised a two-year cap on unemployment benefits, adopted this summer by Parliament, and is fighting to reverse that effort on other major issues.
After weeks of heated discussions between the five parties in the coalition, a compromise emerged overnight Sunday into Monday regarding an additional 9.2 billion euros in savings by 2029, with Bart De Wever demanding 10 billion euros. Multi-year budget savings that generate new revenues, mainly through doubling taxes on securities accounts (which pool together investors’ various financial assets) or increasing VAT on certain products, such as pesticides, cited the Prime Minister as an example. In addition, as a symbolic step, the remuneration of ministers and people’s representatives is no longer indexed to inflation in the legislative body.
“Work today, reap the rewards tomorrow”commented Bart De Wever in X, welcoming the compromise reached by the five parties in his coalition. “We have to climb outside the categories. Everyone will feel the little effort we ask for.”he also argued on French-language public radio RTBF.
Although the agreement was reached at the start of social mobilization, the Prime Minister saw no connection to the first day of the strike: “I don’t feel any pressure from outside. We just work to make a balanced deal”he said this Monday morning.
On the union side, the three-day strike is a call to the entire government to do just that “ending social dismantling”. The socialist union FGTB accused the Prime Minister of appearing “insult” and from “lack of respect” towards this social movement.
And this is not the first strike movement in 2025: unions have launched numerous calls for mobilization since the inauguration of the De Wever government, with participation fluctuating. One of the largest demonstrations occurred in mid-October, when tens of thousands of people marched on the streets of Brussels against perceived costly budget cuts. “brutal”.
