PVDAN-VA’s biggest challenger in the recent elections, renamed the agreement containing 700 resolutions ‘Allemaal Antwerpenaar’ to ‘Everyone already tried’. “We put the housing crisis and public transport high on the agenda during the election campaign,” says PVDA faction leader in the municipal council Manal Toumi. “But despite all the expensive promises, we do not see a break in the trend with the real estate management of recent years.” According to the party, the city council is also making the same promises about public transport as six years ago. “This city council remains completely deaf to the social signal of the past elections, in which the progressive parties scored better than ever,” Toumi concludes.
Also Green responds critically to the presentation of the Antwerp administrative agreement between N-VA and Vooruit. The party says it remains “starved for resources”. The party is obviously satisfied with the reconstruction of the busy Turnhoutsebaan in the Borgerhout district, where the party joins the district council with N-VA and Vooruit. “We still find some ideas from our campaign and from our opposition work, such as the abolition of the quay slot and the introduction of the 3-30-300 rule (around greenery in your own neighborhood, ed.),” says Green party leader Bogdan Vanden Berghe. “For the rest, however, the explanation is quite vague.”
The party also had reservations about the – in their view – too low number of social housing units and the lack of attention to poverty in the plans. “We will read the administrative agreement thoroughly, but based on the accents that emerged at the press conference, this administration appears to be a continuation of the previous administration with minor adjustments here and there, but insufficiently addresses the challenges that Antwerp faces: traffic unsafety, halting mobility and unaffordable housing,” concludes Vanden Berghe.
A continuation of the previous administration? There is Open VLD disagree. The party has been relegated to the opposition and immediately sees a decline for the middle class. The Liberals criticize the removal of a tax reduction for trading centers that are struggling, a measure that was included in the previous administrative agreement but was ultimately never implemented. “Another six years of stagnation in the middle class,” says Bavo De Mol of Open VLD Antwerp. Open VLD disappeared completely from the Antwerp political map at city level and no longer has a single elected municipal councilor.
Just as PVDA shows Flemish Interest got creative with the name of the agreement. “This is the Patrick Janssens agreement,” says VB party leader Filip Dewinter. According to him, N-VA has fully embraced a socialist vision of the city. In his own words, Dewinter makes the analysis that the cordon sanitary made Vooruit the only realistic partner for N-VA, and that party was therefore able to impose numerous vetoes during the negotiations through former mayor Patrick Janssens. “The N-VA voter who hoped for more safety and quality of life and less alienation is back for the effort,” he says. De Winter says that he had expected a stricter approach to drug violence and regrets that “there is no letter about controlling the influx of newcomers and asylum seekers”.
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