10 billion euros: that is the new budgetary effort Bart De Wever intends to achieve by 2029. It is meant to balance the accounts by the end of the legislature, in other words: to reduce the budget deficit.
An ambitious target, given that the Belgian deficit stands at 25,68 billion euros (17 billion at the end of the Vivaldi, 2,8% of GDP), or 5,3% of GDP, while the European Union requires it not to exceed 3%.
But how did we get to such a situation? Is Arizona entirely responsible?
It is important to distinguish debt from deficit. “The debt and the deficit are two quite different concepts, although they are linked. Simply put, debt is nothing other than the sum of the deficits generated since Belgium was created”, explains Julien Vandernoot, head of Public Finance and Taxation at UMons. “The deficit, by contrast, is calculated each year or projected on a multi-year basis. If your spending is greater than your revenue, you run a deficit”.
The PS arguments
On the set of “QR le débat” this Wednesday, economist Hélène Latzer (UCLouvain) explained: “Overall, it is not solely the responsibility of the current government. We are inheriting a situation that has built up over the years. The extra 10 billion currently being discussed and which will have to be found are the result of a number of unexpected shocks or, at the very least, shocks that were not fully incorporated into the initial scenario. Some spending increased faster than expected because of new events, such as defence spending, which was revised sharply upwards because of geopolitical events, and perhaps above all the new energy shocks over recent months, the inflation that followed and the rise in interest rates”.
“For a heavily indebted state, rising rates are a much heavier bill”, she added. “Very simply, part of the debt was contracted almost free of charge at a time when rates were almost zero. As time went by, part of the debt matured. We roll over the debt, meaning that we borrow again to repay the loans originally taken out. The problem is that we are borrowing again at rates that are much higher than before. So even if the debt does not change, it gradually costs us more and spending rises automatically.
Unfortunately, there is nothing we can do about that. So it is not solely the current government, even if one may possibly criticise assumptions about feedback effects that were perhaps too ambitious or that take time to materialise. It is also the legacy of a situation that has been built up over the years and of unexpected shocks”.
“The current deficit is Arizona’s sole responsibility”
Pierre-Yves Dermagne, PS group leader in the Chamber
Comments that prompted a reaction from the opposition. “Of course, one cannot attribute all the debt to the Prime Minister, but the current deficit is Arizona’s sole responsibility”, said Pierre-Yves Dermagne, PS group leader in the Chamber. In his view, the international context and defence spending explain only a very small part of the rise in the deficit. “The 2% of investment in defence were already planned in Arizona’s budget path from the moment the government was formed”, he said, adding that this investment was not supposed to prevent the government from bringing the deficit down to 3%.
Moreover, the report published by the monitoring committee in March 2026 before the outbreak of the war in Iran “had already recorded a doubling of Arizona’s deficit, from 17 billion euros at the end of the Vivaldi to 36 billion euros in the COMO report at the beginning of March. That report did not yet take account of the deterioration in macroeconomic parameters linked to the war in Iran”, he further stated.
“And in the general context of rising borrowing rates, there is still an aggravating factor, namely the decline in Belgium’s credibility on financial markets and among the rating agencies. The agencies downgraded Belgium’s rating under Arizona, pointing to an inability to reform or the slowness of the processes”.
Expected feedback effects?
On the programme, federal MP Michel De Maegd (Les Engagés) called for patience. “Measures voted in Parliament do not sometimes take their full effect for up to 5 years. But this is not an Arizona failure. The excessive deficit procedure under which our country has been placed dates from July 2024, after the Vivaldi. The Arizona government did not yet exist at the time. So this clearly shows that we are also managing the legacy of the past”.
In addition, “the government is already correcting the trajectory. The deficit announced by the monitoring committee was put at 6%. Yet we have already fallen back below the 5% threshold thanks to Arizona’s measures. Of course, this is not the panacea, since we have to get to 3%”.
“The feedback effects announced in Arizona’s initial budget were almost 8,5 billion euros!”, Pierre-Yves Dermagne continued. “This is unprecedented, totally unthinkable. So much so that the Court of Audit said those billions should be brought back to 0 because there was uncertainty about those amounts. The budgets were drawn up on the basis of revenue that was overestimated, and spending reductions that were also overestimated. And when you reduce households’ purchasing power, that has an effect on the economy, growth and, ultimately, public finances”.
Deficit: De Wever’s responsibility to be qualified
On debt, Julien Vandernoot shares the PS’s view: “Any political party that has ever been in power, that has ever approved a budget, bears some responsibility for the public debt”.
By contrast, as regards the deficit, “there is greater responsibility on the government for the budget outcome, and less on the opposition. But this needs to be qualified”, he said. “It is indeed the government that prepares a budget with revenues and spending, which it then submits to Parliament. If forecasts are met, you end up with what the government wanted. The problem is that there will be gaps”. In effect, “some elements depend on the government and others do not”.
As Hélène Latzer said, this is the case for debt interest, for example, which rises because of the geopolitical context or the increase in public debt. And on that public debt, it should be recalled that all governments are responsible. “One cannot say that a government comes to power having nothing to manage. It arrives with elements that depend on previous governments”.
However, “the current government has taken a number of measures that suggest prudence should have guided it in exactly the opposite direction, or at the very least in a much more restrained one”, he added. In line with the PS’s argument, “the Court of Audit has notably criticised everything to do with the current government’s anticipation of feedback effects. Expectations regarding the increase in tax revenue generated by the new jobs created were too positive. There was also a whole series of increases in certain categories of spending without any accompanying increase in revenue”.
Indeed, as MR president Georges-Louis Bouchez pointed out on La Première, state revenue today represents 49,5% of GDP, compared with 54,5% of spending. The government spends more than it receives.