The federal government patted itself on the back on Monday. “The costs are going down, and that is what the European Commission is asking for,” De Croo said at VTM NEWS. Watch the interview below. In total, the new measures will reduce the costs of aging by half a percentage point in 2070.
The latest report by the Study Committee on Aging, which does not take the agreement into account, contrasts sharply with the interventions of the De Croo government. Last year, social spending cost the government 25.7 percent of GDP. That rises to a peak of 30.1 percent in 2050. That increase is faster than that of the economy, writes the aging committee.
This will be followed by a slight decrease to 29.9 percent of GDP in 2070. The largest consumer of social expenditure is pensions, with health care in second place.
N-VA Member of Parliament Wim Van der Donckt points out in a press release that the federal government would have done better by reducing the pension cost from 1 to 1.2 percent of GDP. This would have been promised to the European Commission in exchange for a large sum of money from the corona recovery fund. “With this plan, the federal government will not even reach half of that amount,” writes the member of the Parliamentary Committee on Finance and the Budget. “So there is no question of a reform.”
The European Commission has not put forward a formal figure in the context of the recovery plan. It does say, however, that the reform should improve financial sustainability, encourage people to work longer, strengthen the solidarity of the pension system and ensure convergence between the different systems.