Early Retirement in the Walloon Parliament: Medical Reasons and Reform of Agent Statute

2023-08-31 04:48:00

Between 2011 and 2019, a number of agents of the Walloon Parliament took early retirement for medical reasons. La Libre was able to get hold of a list of ten agents (seven women and three men) retired early between 2011 and 2019 for medical reasons and by decision of the Bureau. The average age of these agents is 53 years old. The oldest left at 63 and the youngest… at 47. The others retired at the age of 51 (one agent), 52 (three agents), 53 (three agents) and 54 (one agent).

In two cases, the reason is a serious illness. It appears, on the other hand, that for the others, the reason invoked before the Federal Pensions Commission relates to questions of psychological incapacity to return to work or to a serious addiction.

Retirements for psychological inability to return to work or for a serious addiction were therefore all, in the end, validated by the successive offices of the Walloon Parliament. The whole question being to know if these departures have a link with the behavior which is reproached today to the clerk, Frédéric Janssens? If this is the case, the Walloon deputies who have succeeded each other in the Bureau since 2011 – the year in which Frédéric Janssens arrived in Parliament – must have been aware of the problem. At the time, did elected officials try to understand why so many officers were retiring for medical reasons?

In short, if there was a problem with the clerk at the time, why did no one act to remedy it? And if the problem was of another nature, have we investigated internally? All this makes a lot of questions which ultimately only have two possible answers. Or, the successive offices were never moved by the fate of the registry officers, they then showed serious negligence. Either they were aware of a management or other problem and they did not move, which in itself is even more serious.

And the reform of the statute of agents?

In this so-called Walloon Parliament clerk case, the question of early pensions seems important. Whether for medical reasons or because the status of the agents authorizes early departures, the labor auditor will certainly look into this question, as well as the temporality of the complaints received from about fifteen agents. Do they have a link with the reform of the status of agents initiated by the clerk Frédéric Janssens at the request of the office? A reform which, let us recall, aimed to interfere with a system of early retirement – La Libre mentioned it in July – which allows agents of the Walloon Parliament to retire at 59 years old.

The reform of the retirement of employees of the Walloon Parliament as a trigger for the “clerk’s affair”? It cannot be ruled out

It should be noted that this is one of the elements of the defense of the clerk put forward by his lawyers during his hearing by the office of the Walloon Parliament, at the beginning of July. A hearing organized within the framework of the internal procedure in the Walloon Parliament which must seal the future of Frédéric Janssens (who is currently suspended) within the Walloon institution.

This reform of the status of agents made compulsory after an ONSS control pinpointing many problems had therefore been validated in July 2022 by the former office. This was then chaired by Jean-Claude Marcourt (PS). The new office meanwhile suspended the reform in January 2023. For the time being, the status of agents is still the same as before, but the new office should return to it before the end of the legislature.

The Clerk of the Walloon Parliament confides in La Libre