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Zakia Khattabi (Ecolo) – tabula rasa

“What to do with Brussels” has gained some serious electoral value. Several parties have acknowledged that this topic needs to be addressed in the light of the upcoming communal and regional elections.

This is the second of a series in which we present an analysis of the proposals made by the current political parties (and hopefully the new ones too).

Zakia Khattabi – tabula rasa

 

In an interview with Le Soir in January, Zakia Khattabi (Ecolo) openly stated that Brussels can no longer be the hostage of the 2 language communities.

 

This statement is remarkable for 2 reasons:

First, she is a politician, and this is a direct attack on the common political practice to use Brussels as a bargaining chip in the ever lasting communautairian war between the 2 language communities. Usually, both sides accuse the other of doing this, but Zakia Khattabi humbles them both by acting as the adult in this debate.

Secondly, she introduces a third actor in this tug-of-war: Brussels itself, as a separate entity, that needs to be freed. Brussels as a metaphor for something bigger than language feuds and regional interests. Brussels as an identity, neither Wallon nor Flemish.

We like it.

But what does it mean?

 

What follows is a summary – and commentary – of the interview in Le Soir

Brussels is built on a misconception

The basis of her narrative lies in the tragic misconception that Brussels is the sum of a French speaking and a Flemish speaking community. This may have been true in the past, but this no longer corresponds to any reality. Yet, in the political reality, Brussels is driven by this dichotomy: every political decision is made in the light of Wallon interests versus Flemish interests, but never in the light of Brussels’ interest. On top of that, the Brussel political chessboard  is further dispersed over 19 communal territories that all have their own interests as well.

Add to this that almost the entire Brussels Regional Parliament is comprised of Mayors, Aldermen and local Council members of these same communal territories, and it is easy to see that there is literally nobody who can look beyond their own fence and actually, honestly, care about Brussels as a bigger entity; the sum of 19; the collective; the region.

Zakhia Khattabi wants to break this. She wants Brussels to exist on its own, based on its own model, not those of Flanders and Wallonia. A model built up from scratch.

 

Because once we recognise that Brussels is made of Brussels residents, and not of Wallons and Flemish accidentally living together in the same space, the institutional logic starts to break down: in this setting, there is no more need for  Cocof (French Community Commission), VGC (Flemish Community Commission) and Cocom (Common Community Commission). Their capabilities can shift to the Region, serving the Brusseleirs, rather than the “Francophones” and the “Néerlandophones”. Because, at the end of the day, what is the point of having two separate policies for disabled people. Or sports. Or employment and training. It does not correspond to any actual reality.

So far, we completely agree. We do however recognise the fact that aside of Brussels being the home to 1.2M Brusseleirs, it is also the capital of Belgium, so, the cultivation of both languages – and more specifically, bilingual public service – must have its place somewhere. We don’t think it needs to be institutionalised to the extreme as it is now, but we have to acknowledge the capital function of Brussels, and we’re missing this in the interview.

 

Tabula rasa – creating a Brussels from Brussels

Zakia continues by questioning the validity of 19 waste policies, of 19 parking policies and discusses a possible shift of capabilities from the Commune to the Region, thus reducing the weight of the communes. At the same time she acknowledges that this will be very difficult to achieve, as the regional parliament is composed of the very same people who would have to let that local power go.

She does however, strongly emphasize that this too, should be part of the debate, and the same is true for other taboos, like the police zones, the bilingual lists, the number of parliamentarian seats, and by extension the guaranteed Flemish representation in the Regional Government.

All these taboos must at least be broken and put on the table, to start from a clean slate and create a “Brussels from Brussels”.

Here, we are a little disappointed. We love the promise, but she stops at the observation, leaves the door open, and does not take a clear position (which she clearly did with the Community – Region discussion). She hints at it, but we would have liked to hear that powerful local politicians have no business in the Regional Parliament and vice versa, and that by reducing the weight of the Commune, the need for a full administration disappears by the same logic as the Community-to-Region shift discussed above.

But it is a good start. It is daring and it sets the bar relatively high.

 

 

 

 

CDH – The 3rd Way

“What to do with Brussels” has gained some serious electoral value. Several parties have acknowledged that this topic needs to be addressed in the light of the upcoming communal and regional elections.

This is the first of a series in which we present an analysis of the proposals made by the current political parties (and hopefully the new ones too).

CDH: the 3rd way – where does it lead?

CdH, characteristically, begins with dividing the field into “Status Quo” on one side and “Clean Slate” on the other, emphasizing that they do not support either of these extremes, but choose to walk the middle way.

Merging the communes has no place in this middle way. Firstly, because the commune has an important role in terms of proximity, especially for functions such as child care, education, culture, sports etc. But more importantly, merging communes and end up with 12 or 10 or 6 only enlarges the competition between (fewer but bigger) communes and the Region.

We agree with the first statement. The commune is important. We do however fail to why they would need a full government to take care of functions mentioned above (in fact, cdH later on proposes merging such functions over communal borders, so we are not sure where they want to go with this statement).

We even more strongly agree with the second: the last thing we want is 12 communes. Or 6. We want 19. But only ONE government. And of course, the Region must be included in this redesign. Why else go through the pain of a redesign in the first place.

We’ll be honest: the paragraph above summerizes our position towards this 3rd Way: it has valid points, but cannot convince us. What is worse: after reading the proposal, we were left with an image of lasagna. A slightly different lasagna, but lasagna nonetheless.

What follows is a summary – and commentary – of their original text, which can be found here.

 

Gouvernance et efficacité: vers une nouvelle dynamique bruxelloise

The tagline roughly translates into: Governance and competence – towards a new Brussels’ aptitude.

But what does it mean?

The proposal is centered around 5 principles:

  1. Redution and simplification
  2. Convergence
  3. Efficiency
  4. Participation
  5. Strengthen the Francophone alliance

 

Reduction and simplification

With this, cdH means reduction and simplification of the public administration, which – in their words – leads to a reduction of public cost and a higher efficiency of service. They divide this principle into a reduction of the number of elected representatives on local level (30%) and on regional level (absolute numbers), and the reduction of the number of public agencies and administrations.

At first sight, this looks like a great opener. We’ll talk about the reduction of public structures in a bit, but we can be very short about the reduction of representatives: This is not what it seems. In fact, it is nothing more than an dummy package.

30% reduction of representatives: a genuine simplification or a zero-sum game

The proposed 30% is not arbitrary. In fact, this number is chosen in the light of the famous “decumul” (which essentially means that locally elected persons shall no longer combine this with a regional seat as well. Currently, this is common practice: a lot of mayors, aldermen and local council representatives have a seat in the regional parliament).

It works as follows:

If everyone abstains from cumulation, then there will be a higher number of distinct representatives, which means a higher total cost. In order to correct for this higher total cost, the number of representatives has to drop.

In other words: the rationale here is not to have a reduction of representatives because right now, there are too many and we can do with less. The rationale is nothing more than a zero-sum game: reduce the number of representatives to correct for the rise in cost that a “decumul” would entail.

Even though we strongly support simplification, this reasoning makes us very suspicious. Very. Because what happens when this “decumul” does not happen? Will cdH then still support a 30% reduction? Or lower it to 10%? This position has too many open ends to be trustworthy.

Simplify the institutional landscape

CdH starts of with a call for an extensive audit to map all Brussels public structures, ranging from government to intercommunals to non-profits, and merge them in case of overlap in capabilities and/or missions, or fully reintegrate them in the governmental administrative structure in case they are 100% (or nearly 100%) publicly funded.

We support this. But this is not a proposal for better governance. In our view, this is a proposal for eradication of mismanagement, and for us, this is a prerequisite. A sine qua non. The Brussels institutional landscape is obscure by design. The several intercommunals and non-profits do not exactly have a track record in transparancy, and in some cases their existence is justified only by partisan self-serving power consolidation, or language law avoidance.

The text continues with a few other proposals for merging services and management capabilities across the municipal boundaries, which we gladly support. But merging across municipal boundaries is the exact opposite of a justification for the existence of 19 separate autonomous administrations.

 

Convergence

The next principle is Convergence.

The idea here is to develop a collective roadmap and apply this to all layers of governance, modeled after the EU-2020 (an economic middle-long term plan, spanning 10 years). Each of the communes would then have to commit to this plan, and execute it within the context of their capabilities.

This roadmap should have quantifyable goals, supervised by a new independent “Brussels Plan Buro”.

Apart from the immediate Soviet ring it has to it, we think this does address one of the problems the current Brussels governance. Each commune has the same capabilities. Each commune can execute their own roadmaps autonomously without caring about their neighbours. So we definitely support aligning.

But who in this plan decides the “collective roadmap”? And if this collective roadmap is binding, why is autonomy on communal level still needed? And who is this independent “Brussels Plan Buro”?

But it doesn’t stop here.

To guard the convergence of this roadmap, there should be a Convergence Committee, comprised of all levels of executive power: federal, the 2 language communities, representives of all 19 communes, chaired by the Region. This Convergence Committee can break up into task forces, depending on the topic.

Finally, there should be a Commune Committee, comprised of regional ministers and the 19 communes. This Committee has a more executive nature. It creates initiatives and action plans.

We fail to see how 19 full administrations + Commune Committee + Commune Committee task forces + Convergence Committee + Regional Government is an improvement of the current situation.

Another zero-sum?

We merely suspect that the introduction of these Committees nicely offsets the loss of positions in merging the services and management capabilities on communal level, leaving us with yet another zero-sum game.

Especially because the next paragraph in the original text proposes to strengthen the Region by shifting capabilities such as mobility, parking, taxes, urban planning and big infrastructure from the level of the commune to the Region.

All we read here is one big argument for combining the strategical decision making and collective topics on the level of the Region (of which we are strongly in favor), while reducing the communal work to execution (of which we are strongly in favor), while maintaining the position that communes need a fully fledged administration, including autonomous decision making. And that, we don’t understand. It makes no sense other than in a context where the goal is not really to simplify, but to create the illusion of simplification while trying to not upset the current order.

 

Participation

The next principle is citizens participation in the decision making processes. Unfortunately, this paragraph gets very little attention and is not very clear on how, why and in which capacity this participations should take place, other than a “needs-based” implementation of this principle in all layers of the administration.

We are very much in favor of citizen participation, so we would really like to know more details here, because “needs-based” can easily be misused as a political menu à la carte, whereas we think it should be an integral part of the democratic fabric.

Strengthen the Francophone alliance

We get it: they’re a Francophone party. But we’re growing a little tired of the “Brussels is primarily Francophone” mantra. So, we will not discuss this further.

Conclusion

The 3rd way, for us, is merely a zero-sum game, the next in a long row of blueprints for obvious complications and future derailment. A compromise that shifts positions around, trying to keep current politicians happy, but at the end of the day does not really bring simplification. It seems as if cdH wants to have it both ways: innovation while keeping the status quo. And this form of self-delusion is what we don’t tolerate anymore.

They do however include a few proposals that we consider truly valuable. These proposals are not of a structural nature though; they are more like rules of engagement; a Code of Conduct. We want to list them separately, because it’s only fair to end on a positive note:

No more “placeholders” on electoral lists:
A very common strategies used by all the current political parties: Put a big name on both the communal and regional list, attract a lot of votes, and then let one of the seats (usually the communal one) to someone else on the list. An understandable strategy, but not democratic.

No prevalence based on list order:
Another common strategy that cdH wants to see gone: The top names on the list get the seats, even when their vote count is lower than names closer to the bottom. The most extreme case here is the “pusher”, usually a Really Big Name With No Intention To Grab The Seat But Solely There To Attract Votes, who is placed on the very bottom of the list.

No more separate entities for non-profits that have their main funding from public finances:
Setting up non-profits is the number one strategy used for partisan power consolidation and avoiding Belgium’s language law. Untangling this knot can only be welcomed!

No payment for mayors and aldermen residing in boards of such entities:
Of course. If residing in a board of directors is Important for your Job, then it simply is Part of your Job.

De-politicization of the public administration by transparent recruitment processes, done by independent jurys, both for fonctionnaires and external parties:
Another partisan power consolidation technique that we really need to get rid of.

Publication of all decisions, acts, opinions and studies made by governmental bodies:
Obviously. It is an absolute disgrace that even Transparencia has a hard time collecting this information.

 

You are the 415.000

Your vote counts.

This is the tagline of an article published recently by the Bulletin.

 

In order to show you that they are right (your vote DOES count!), we have crunched the numbers for you.

 

According to IBSA – BISA, on January 1st 2017, Brussels was home to 414.139 expats Brusseleirs with a non-Belgian nationality.

About 275K of these are EU nationals, the remaining 139K are from outside the EU.

Let’s visualise these numbers on the total population of Brussels (1.191.604)

The EU nationals make up almost a quarter of the population; EU nationals and other non-Belgians together make up more than a third.

But there’s an interesting additional observation:

When looking solely at the distribution of adults (the number one prerequisite for voting), the portion of expats non-Belgian Brusseleirs shoots up to 37% (unfortunately, those numbers are not available per commune; we therefore chose to stick to the more pessimistic minors+adults distributions)

This is not trivial. At all.

It is time to claim your spot

Despite this clear presence of both groups in Brussels’ society, the percentage of registered voters is relatively low.

With the communal elections in October in mind, we feel that all Brusseleirs should have a say in how they are governed. It’s time to claim your spot! In some communes (see below), the percentage of expats non-Belgian Brusseleirs reaches almost 50%!

Let that sink in for while. You can really make a difference! You are the 415K.

Brussels is your home. Care for her. Register. Vote.

 

 

The charts below show the demographics per commune, ordered by EU portion size*:

*chosen as ordering criterion because we don’t have data on the voting eligibility in the Other group.

As said before: in the context of elections, the EU portion on the total is higher than depicted. This is caused by the following factors:

  • the percentages shown cover the total population, minors included. Minors are not eligible to vote.
  • on average, the percentage of adults in the EU and Other group is 5 points higher than in the BE group
  • the Other group has stricter constraints on voting eligibility, giving the EU group a relative gain on the total

 

Source: http://statistics.brussels/themes/population – nationalities 2017
Photo by Louis Smit on Unsplash

How things are today

Let’s start with some numbers:

Région de Bruxelles-Capitale

 

1.191.604 inhabitants

 

Local government
Regional government

 

19 Mayors
1 Prime Minister

 

154 Aldermen
4 Ministers

 

19 Social Security directors
3 State Secretaries

 

667 Council Representatives
89 Members of Parliament

 

.
869 local politicians
.
97 regional politicians

 

Which amount to a total of
966 politicians running our city

 

Let that sink in for a minute.

966 different opinions based on language, political color, ideology, residence, business interest and any permutation of those.

 

It’s a miracle anything gets done in this city in the first place.

 

But 19 mayors on 1.1Mio inhabitants is not so bad at all… Flanders has more mayors per 1.1Mio inhabitants. And Wallonia even more. So what’s the problem? …

 

… we hear opponents say when we bring up the multitude of politicians in Brussels.

 

True. But the number of mayors per 1.1Mio inhabitants is not the issue here. The issue is relative proximity.

The communes in Flanders and Wallonia cover greater areas and their centres are farther apart. In other words, their relative proximity is low.

This is radically different in the Brussels Capital Region.

Inter-dependency

Our communes are literally glued together. There is no inhabited space between. They are so glued together that residential streets sometimes span up to 4 different communes, parks can have an invisible border running right through them and even building blocks (and buildings) can be divided between several communes.

This creates a very strong inter-dependency, and results in the infamous examples where residents cannot park on the other side of the street, the police station across may not be yours, road markings stop halfway the street, etc.

(we’re not even putting the regional jurisdiction into the equation here… The inter-communal spiderweb is bad enough already).

We all know this, but take a moment and look at the map below. This is how close we are to our neighbouring communes. And as with all situations where close neighbours are involved: we cannot simply do whatever we like, or simply refuse to do something because we dislike it.

However, the Brussels governance structure allows for exactly that. Governance-by-obstruction is a widely adopted strategy here.

In a world where reality changes radically every 6 months or so, inertia is no longer acceptable. We are hopelessly stuck in the 20th century and we blame old politics for that.

Embrace the communes but change governance

We think Brussels must be drastically simplified. We also think this can be done without abolishing the communes. Every big city has its districts and so do we. Unifying Brussels is by no means an attempt to dissolve the uniqueness of each of them.

Unifying Brussels is about changing governance, while preserving the characteristics of her communes.

 

Our well-known map of Brussels. Click on each administration marker to see the governmental break-down per commune.