In 2023, the federal government distributed 66 billion euros in subsidies. Issue? Today, a report presented to the House of Representatives shows that the money is missing. Nobody knows where he went.
It is a chaotic story that the federal government is facing today in Current Affairs. In 2023, some 66 billion euros will be granted in the form of subsidies. Issue? We don’t know to whom, we don’t know why. This is what our colleagues from the The Latest News.
A recent report presented to the House of Representatives shows that the money has… disappeared. Nobody knows where he went. It was the government of Alexander De Croo which, in 2023, asked researchers from the FPS BOSA, the federal public service Strategy & Support, to verify all the subsidies distributed during the year.
Services confuse some terms
And it appears today that there is a flagrant lack of clarity regarding the allocation of subsidies. It is practically impossible to have an overview of all the subsidies granted by the federal government, points out The Latest News. Even the term “subsidy” does not seem clear. “We have noticed that the services confuse certain terms and that there is even confusion in the translation between French and Dutch”indicated a researcher in the hemicycle.
Nearly 40 billion euros were thus scrutinized. Result? Three quarters of this amount had not been subject to any control. This means that 30.2 billion euros were paid by public services without checking whether the conditions for granting subsidies were met and without monitoring the use of the money subsequently.
Lack of grant management
In their investigations, researchers have not always found the necessary answers. “Some utilities were able to provide us with all the information almost immediately, but others took a long time to do so. For still others, there was not even a reaction.”
All this shows the lack of management of subsidies in Belgium. The researchers therefore made several suggestions in front of the hemicycle. “There is an urgent need for transparency and evaluation. To do this, we must work on a clear and legal definition of the term ‘subsidy’ and create a federal register of subsidies linked to regional databases”relays The Latest News.
They also suggest the establishment of a single central expertise service, capable of monitoring and evaluating subsidy flows.
subsidies house of representatives federal government
