Are the municipalities of Brussels guilty of wasteful spending?
A comparative analysis of the budgets of Belgium’s main urban municipalities
Notes de la rédaction
This is the press release related to the article from Magali Verdonck, Michèle Taymans, Nathalie Van Droogenbroeck, published May the 9th 2011. Read the article.
Are the municipalities of Brussels guilty of wasteful spending? For a long time, research has drawn attention to the structural under-funding of the Brussels Region. This observation, however, is rarely included in certain public discourses, in particular due to accusations that Brussels is supposedly poorly managed. The main targets are the 19 municipalities of Brussels – spared from the merging of the municipalities which took place in Belgium between 1975 and 1983 – which make Brussels the mosaic that it is.
In this context, three economists – Magali Verdonck, Michèle Taymans and Nathalie Van Droogenbroeck (FUSL/CERB) – have carried out an in-depth analysis of the expenditure of municipalities, in order to examine the supposed wasteful use of public funds. This was achieved through a comparison of the municipalities of Brussels with five other similar entities: Antwerp (19 municipalities), Ghent (5), Charleroi (10) and Liege (14).
It was impossible to identify significant shortcomings, whereas constraints specific to the municipalities of Brussels emerged quite clearly. Therefore, the municipalities of Brussels stand out due to objective characteristics rather than to their poor management. The result is a particularly delicate budgetary situation and the fact that these municipalities cannot devote the same financial means as their counterparts to household and company grants, social assistance, the arts, adult education, sports, etc. This is why, for example, municipal education financing per student is much lower in Brussels than in the other entities included in the comparison.
The resulting picture is therefore that of municipalities which are generally well managed and careful about spending, but whose population suffers from under-funding.
Furthermore, the budgetary perspectives are bleak for the municipalities of Brussels, which cannot cut back on their spending and, for the moment, have little chance for better financing – one which would take their specificities into account as well as those of their population and the resulting specific expenses.
References
Verdonck, Magali, Taymans, Michèle and Van Droogenbroeck , Nathalie,“titre”, Brussels Studies [Online], General collection, No 49, May the 9th 2011. URL: https://journals.openedition.org/brussels/869
Contact
Benjamin Wayens, Senior Editor: bwayens[at]brusselsstudies.be