Already in 2022, the accounts were not in balance but previous surpluses allowed an overall result in the green. Here, for 2023, the supervisory authority notes a slippage in personnel costs (despite the freeze on recruitment introduced following the first slippage in 2022). The municipality overestimated parking revenues and the collection of property tax, thus creating a discrepancy between the revenues announced and those actually received. The weight of the debt (and therefore the burden of investments), for its part, does not explain the slippage of 2023.
Sanction at the key
When a municipality is not in balance in its accounts as required by law, it can call on the Brussels Regional Fund for refinancing municipal treasuries. This fund, in the form of a non-repayable loan, provides financial assistance to the municipality in difficulty. In exchange, the latter undertakes to quickly return to balance via a financial consolidation plan and the presence, for twenty years, of a regional inspector who pushes the municipality to return to balance.
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So Molenbeek is saved? Not quite. The municipality had already received two loans from the fund in 2015 and 2016, for a cumulative amount of 27 million euros and is therefore still monitored by the inspector. The objective was already a return to balance in 2023. It is therefore a failure. In the event of non-compliance with the sanitation plan, the region can, as a last resort, request reimbursement of loans granted to the municipality.
“The municipality is deviating from its plan which provided for a return to balance in 2023 and 2024. The 2023 account would present a very significant slippage, notes the office of Bernard Clerfayt, outgoing Brussels minister in charge of supervision of local authorities. The municipality will be required to take strict sanitation measures in order to regain balance as part of its 2025-27 plan.” If the regional authority does not see any measure to limit the slippage in the next budget, the sword of Damocles of the reimbursement request could be brandished.
The future PS & PTB majority which is emerging therefore already finds itself, even before taking office, facing a wall.
Eleven municipalities under plan
Molenbeek is not the only one to have benefited from the fund: we note, more recently, Berchem (3.27 million in 2021), Evere (5.59 million in 2022), Forest (11 million in 2023), Anderlecht (10.66 million in 2023) and Schaerbeek (12 million in 2024, to compensate for the accounting error of 20 million euros at the CPAS)
Since its creation, the regional refinancing fund has injected just under 245 million euros into municipal finances. Municipalities like Etterbeek, Ganshoren, Jette and Watermael-Boitsfort are still officially under plan but their accounts have been cleaned up.
Forest (like Evere) must return to balance by 2025; which promises an equally complex budgetary exercise for the PS-Ecolo-PTB majority.
Schaerbeek, where the majority is struggling to emerge, must also continue its efforts to get back on track by 2026. Berchem, Anderlecht and Saint-Gilles, for their part, are respecting the trajectory of their plan, concludes the Clerfayt firm. The other municipalities, Uccle, Brussels City, Saint-Josse, Woluwe, Auderghem, Koekelberg and Ixelles are not under sanitation plan.
