THE DEBATE OF THE DAY. Should unemployed people lose their benefits after three years? | Interior

“Personally, I am not in favor of ending unemployment benefits over time because you will lose people on the labor market,” says the labor economist. “There will then be men and women who will no longer receive benefits, who will push you out of unemployment, but who will not work at the same time. They end up in the inactivity: people who have no work and are not looking for work. You will then lose them, while we need as many people as possible. That is the problem of the Belgian labor market: not so much high unemployment, but high inactivity. It concerns 1.3 million people between the ages of 25 and 64 and we could then increase that group, which is much larger here than abroad. That is why I am a cool lover of the time limitation of unemployment benefits.”

“I am completely won over by Mahdi’s proposal to strengthen the degressivity in benefits, so that they start higher than now, but fall faster. That is the Danish model and we have to move towards it. It is crucial that the system is also drastically simplified. With a higher unemployment benefit you can make the difference with other benefits such as the living wage. Those who are head of household and receive a living wage do not see such a big difference with the lowest unemployment benefit and the lowest wages, which means that the incentive to work is low. An advantage would also be that it is simpler. Our system is far too complex, says the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). Unemployment benefits are also lowering today, but slowly and very spread out. As a result, it is an incentive for few people. If your benefit is initially high – because no one chooses to become unemployed – and then drops significantly after three months, that is different. The underlying idea is that an unemployed person can then look for a job that suits them best in the first few months, but after a while they feel that it is necessary to get back to work and then choose a shortage occupation.”

“Of course that is a good proposal, I have been defending it for about twenty years,” said Jan Denys on Radio 1. “It is a form of progressive insight at the CD&V, which was still obstructing the previous government.” Denys finds it “off the mark” that Rousseau talked about bullying the unemployed. “I would like to point out that the system does not exist anywhere in the world. So, in Conner Rousseau’s opinion, the rest of the world would bully the unemployed and we would be the only ones not to – while our employment rate is very low.”

Denys believes that limiting the unemployment benefit in time is a good solution because, in his view, the various forms of benefit in our social system – unemployment benefit, social assistance benefit and benefit for sickness and disability – should be kept separate. “Unemployment benefits serve to support people between jobs to give them the opportunity to look for a new job in an orderly manner. If people are long-term unemployed, we know from research that the chance of returning to the labor market is very small. That is why people in other countries switch to social assistance after a few years.” According to Denys, the activation is much less effective in our country due to the “bad policy”, because “people know that benefits are in principle infinite”.

Research shows that the signal of degressivity is not enough to get people to work, says Denys. For him, limiting the time of the benefit to three years is already very generous – “in other countries the maximum is two years” – and that is a much stronger incentive for the unemployed to take action than the systematic reduction of the benefit .

Vooruit chairman Conner Rousseau already reacted negatively to CD&V’s proposal yesterday: “Are we going to stimulate work by stamping on the unemployed or by pushing workers up?” Rousseau advocated simply applying the existing rules on unemployment benefits and monitoring them much better. The chairman of Vooruit declared himself “not yet convinced” of Mahdi’s proposal, but did not slam the door completely shut either. “I want to think about everything and maybe I want to be convinced,” he said.

The political debate on limiting unemployment benefits over time is not new. Groen and Vooruit are traditionally not in favor of it, while Open Vld and N-VA are. And until yesterday CD&V could not be found for it either. “Don’t believe them when they say that limiting benefits over time will solve unemployment,” former figurehead Kris Peeters sneered at N-VA in 2014. “Being unemployed forever, that is only possible with us”, is a joke that N-VA chairman Bart De Wever regularly uses.

And now it’s up to you. What is your opinion? Let us know in the comments below this article. We’ll be collecting the most exciting reactions in a new piece tonight.

7 questions about limitation of unemployment benefit in time. “Now too many people think: whether I work or not, the government will take care of me”

CD&V wants to be able to terminate the right to unemployment benefits after three years