The accidental budget manager

After a frenzied two-and-a-half-year stint in the federal government, Brusseleer Guy Vanhengel is back where he wants to be: in his home town, as the regional budget minister

After the regional elections of June 2009, Guy Vanhengel had just had time to form the Flemish arm of the Brussels government (effectively a Flemish government and a francophone government welded into one) when he was summoned to the federal government to replace Karel De Gucht, who had moved on to the European Commission. In his new role as Belgian vice prime minister, Vanhengel’s main task was to help then prime minister Herman Van Rompuy in assuring a new era of ‘tranquil steadfastness’, after a period of intense financial and internal political crises. However, tranquility never came: the situation got steadily more out of hand and Vanhengel was drawn into what he calls “one of the most curious bits of Belgian political history since the country’s creation”.

“After a few months, Herman Van Rompuy was called to take up the position of European Council President,” says Vanhengel, in his Avenue des Arts office overlooking central Brussels. “So Yves Leterme became prime minister once again. And then Alexander De Croo assumed the position of Open VLD party president and proceeded to take the government off life support. Since then, we’ve broken the world record for the longest-running caretaker government. We even – and that’s something unique – had parliament approve a budget. We had to settle a global agreement between trade unions and employers. By a unanimous vote in parliament we set up an operation with Nato, to go to war in Libya, and brought it to a successful end. And after Fortis, we had to nationalise yet another bank, Dexia. All of this – for a caretaker government!”

During the Dexia episode, Vanhengel feared a complete breakdown of the entire economic system. But his exploits as a federal minister ended on a note of mischievous joy: “In the end, the country came on the radar of speculators, with a credit rating downgrade and state difficulties in raising money on the international markets. But then we cocked a snook at all speculators, and by ‘we’, I mean all Belgians. Whereas usually, every three months, we raise a few tens of millions of euros from Belgian savers, last December, simply by creating a little more publicity around the matter [Leterme publicly requested that individual Belgians buy their country’s debt], we raised over five billion euros. So as to say, ‘If you’re going to make a fuss about the interest you’re going to charge us when we raise money on the financial markets, we’ll just raise the money ourselves.’”

Vanhengel is the only politician ever to have been part of the Brussels, federal and Flemish governments. He likes being in the Brussels one, he says, best of all. Brussels was also on his mind when he (somewhat reluctantly, it is said) agreed to join the federal government. From that position, he figured, he would be able to exert more influence on negotiations on the refinancing of Brussels, which he foresaw would come on the table, as part of a package deal around the Brussels-Halle-Vilvoorde talks. The question did indeed arise, and Vanhengel got his way: “With my party [Open VLD], I always defended the idea that the way in which the means were distributed in this country was unfair – Brussels-Capital Region always got about half a billion euros less than it objectively was entitled to. The Flemish and the francophones always held the region by the scruff of the neck – used it as a weapon in their battles. But if you’re responsible for the place, you have to say: ‘Guys, you’re not being serious here. There are 1,100,000 people living in the region. You need to fix this area.’ This half a billion, though a mere detail in the whole of the Belgian budget, is enormously important for the people of Brussels.”

Now that Brussels, in Vanhengel’s view, has been given a shake-down, old plans and ambitions have been given a new lease of life. Part of the money will go on the expansion of the metro network. “Until two, three years ago, there wasn’t even the mental room to think about that. But now we can complete the network, just as it was conceived from the start. Within twenty years, it should finally be possible in this city to move around comfortably by underground in all directions. The first new line will be from north to south, from Uccle to Brussels Airport. This should be up and running within ten years. The engineers are already at the drawing board. So that we can ultimately banish all these ‘tin cans’ – as I call cars – to the background.”

The new deal for Brussels didn’t come without conditions, imposed by the federal level. Number one demand, as of old, was greater centralisation. This routine demand irked Vanhengel, who sees it coming from an idea of Brussels as spendthrift and inefficiently run. He insists the facts do not support the conjecture: “On the contrary, studies exist which point to Brussels as a model. The municipalities face significant challenges, but they have balanced budgets. True, the regional budget shows a deficit. But, then again, it was originally created with a deficit. After which it never got what it had a right to, making it hard for the government to ever clear the deficit. But now [with the extra funds] the budget should balance by 2015. I guarantee it!”

But Vanhengel is happy with the way the federal demands were translated into concrete measures. Simply abolishing the municipalities was not an option for him: “That’s a traditional demand which arises out of political frustration. It’s not based on a policy approach. The political presence of Dutch-speakers in the municipal assemblies is very limited, so the Flemish parties have little say there. It’s quite the reverse at regional level, with its guaranteed representation. But look at the city of Antwerp: they once abolished their municipalities to create one centrally led city of half a million inhabitants. Today, they’ve gone back on it and created district councils, to have a policy level closer to the population.

So we said: no, we’re not going to abolish the municipalities. Then we asked: where do we absolutely need centralisation, where we don’t already have it? We had already centralised the fire and emergency services. And now we have some of the best emergency services in the world. Should anything happen to you right now, you will be on an operating table within fifteen minutes, I guarantee you. What we did there, we can also do with the police. Security will become a regional competency, as will mobility. And also large infrastructure projects, such as on the Heysel plateau. Up until now, the city of Brussels could do it all by itself, without taking the adjacent municipalities into account. That is over now [with the new Brussels metropolitan community that incorporates 35 communes in Flanders and Wallonia]. The city of Brussels will have to leave the final decision to the region.”

Vanhengel is pleased to be back in Brussels, where he can work on a less technical, more concrete level. Though a budget specialist for many years, it’s not where his heart is. His background is in education and he still speaks about it with great passion. So how did he end up being a budget specialist in the first place? “Oh, by accident. My interest in budget – I wouldn’t call it a passion – was aroused in the 1980s when I was working with Guy Verhofstadt and he became a budget minister. Neither of us knew much about it at the time. So we both took lessons from old stagers, especially finance inspectors. Once you get a certain proficiency in something, you tend to be sought out for it. Of course, fiscal and financial work is necessary and important, but for someone like me who likes concrete things, it’s not so obvious. You’re sitting there in front of piles of large green documents containing lots of tables. You can take pride in the fact that it all balances out in the end, but that’s about it. What’s nice about it is that it actually requires more psychology than number-crunching, especially in assessing how you can reconcile the ambitions of your colleagues – all of which are, in one way or another, quite defendable.”

Since January, Vanhengel has been, once again, a budget minister. Although this time it’s for the Brussels Region, which is okay by him. “My colleagues might not like to hear it, but being in the Brussels government is much more like a local mandate. You’re more of an alderman or a mayor. The federal level is very policy-oriented, the Brussels level is much more project-centred. You’re working on projects that you can follow up from start to finish, with some luck. For instance, seven, eight years ago, I started a project which involved building a kitchen tower for the Elishout hotel school in Anderlecht. Recently, I had dinner on its top floor, with a lovely view over Brussels. Ask a hundred politicians which mandate they prefer, they will almost all invariably choose their local one!”

Guy Vanhengel In brief

Born

1958, Brussels

Brussels Budget Minister

2000-2004

2004-2009

2012-ongoing

Flemish Minister of Sport

2002-2003

Federal Budget Minister

July 2009-December 2011

Previous occupation

Teacher

Photo by Sander De Wilde