2023-09-16 03:20:14
The president of Les Engagés calls for an unrestrained debate on Belgium’s migration strategy. Particularly to deal with labor shortages.
Positive week for the Committed. The movement resulting from the programmatic overhaul of the cdH has just propelled the former boss of the Walloon Business Union, Olivier de Wasseige, as head of the list for the next regional elections in the Liège constituency. Swing to the right? The president and deputy mayor of Namur, Maxime Prévot, always wants to “bring together left and right sensibilities” in order to restore political weight to centrism, which he considers to be the guarantor of political action, especially at the Federal . Interview.
The Council of State overturned Madame de Moor’s measure on the reception of male asylum seekers. Reaction?
It is not a surprise. The Engagés have been denouncing this measure and its illegality for a long time. We must not bury our heads in the sand, there is a difficulty in the reception policy, but it is not with restrictive measures that we will resolve the problem. This raises a global question: what migration policy does this country wish to adopt? Gold, we do not dare to lead a real public debate on this strategy. We are seeing the beginnings of an intensification of migration flows on a global scale. Economic, climatic, social, political and food crises will generate displacement. Many politicians are locked in a debate polluted by the French approach which says that talking about migration is playing into the hands of the extremes. On the contrary, I think that refusing to talk about it with serenity and haughtiness fuels rejection.
The issue is above all European. The debate rages…
Finally! Canada has long understood, like Germany, that in order to balance the economic system, supply pension fundsto provide our businesses with the workforce they cannot find, we must rely on skills from migratory flows.
So you support Mr. Di Rupo’s call regarding regularizations?
I am not in favor of massive regularization without criteria, but I subscribe to the idea of being able to both reactivate our own job seekers and to supplement labor needs with people who come from abroad and have the required skills or the will that is sometimes lacking.
“As mayor, I receive people every week who are seeking regularization.”
Even illegal ones?
Obviously. An illegal person often works under the table to meet his needs. As mayor, I receive people every week who are seeking regularization. They have skills, sometimes have children who have only known Belgium. This issue must be the subject of a public strategy as is the case in other areas. For years, we have been pleading, with the voluntary and economic sector, for clear regularization criteria.
What kinds of criteria?
For example, the match between profiles and professions in shortage. We need to be able to be much more responsive on work permits. I have letters from employers who sign commitment promises to the Foreigners Office. As the procedure sometimes drags on for years, we encourage undeclared work, we deprive the State of revenue and this makes the employer more precarious.
Should municipalities do more to welcome asylum seekers?
Everyone must play their role. I’m very comfortable talking about it, Namur is the only city in Wallonia which has accepted two reception centers. Beyond the fears that this may generate, as long as supervision is guaranteed by the Red Cross, the population gets involved and the municipal authority commits, cohabitation takes place correctly.
There is a system of distribution by municipalities, which does not seem to give the expected results.
The problem is that Mrs de Moor’s predecessors, on the grounds that we were no longer facing a migratory peak, closed capacities.
Should we offer hotel rooms to avoid repeated condemnation from the State?
No, it would be an admission of the State’s negligence, but it is abnormal for the State to be condemned thousands of times.
The PS intends to campaign on reducing working hours. What do you think ?
I’m against. We prefer the possibility of concentrating your full time on four days instead of five (a possibility that has existed since the jobs deal, Editor’s note). So one day we release for a better balance with privacy, with a beneficial effect on mobility by bringing work into line with the reality of many blended families. And we remain paid for full time, because we work full time. Go and explain that the miracle recipe for creating jobs without destroying our competitiveness is to get up in the morning to be paid for five days while only working four. Intellectually, I cannot subscribe to this.
I also recommend a right to rebound twice in one’s career. There is nothing more aberrant than someone who feels bad at work, refuses to resign because they will lose unemployment benefits and sometimes falls into illness.
“I don’t know many companies that remain rigid on their recruiting principles.”
Do companies also need to question themselves?
They do it. I don’t know many companies that remain rigid on their recruiting principles, especially when faced with a labor shortage. To reactivate our job seekers, we propose the end of unemployment benefits after two years. Unlike other parties, in order not to add precariousness to precariousness, we prefer to guarantee 75 or 85% of the salary to cushion the shock and more easily bounce back. After two years, would open up a right to employment, the public authorities having to make proposals. If the refusals multiply, it will be the RIS. There are fewer and fewer people who accept the injustice between low-paid work and benefit amounts. We therefore need real tax reform. Ours carries out of more than 40 billion and has the courage of budgetary credibility. This is one of the things that convinced Olivier de Wasseige to join us.
In its principles, your project is not so far from the Van Peteghem reform.
Except that it crumbled after some bickering. That made it sputter.
Mr. Di Rupo announces a reform of Forem. How do you welcome it?
With kindness and a smirk. That a socialist finally deigns to want to reform the Forem must be underlined, but the past years have convinced me that without a radical approach to change, we will do with Forem what we do with taxation: marginal adjustments.
Is there a real fundamental problem at Forem?
There are too many training courses provided and some of them attract almost no one. Some have more an occupational vocation as strategic in relation to the job market.
“The future boss of Forem will come from a socialist ministerial cabinet, that doesn’t give me confidence.”
It’s a bit surreal, what you’re saying…
We must question this situation by agreeing to close certain sectors to develop others. Be careful, there are also good things that are done by Forem. But I doubt the efficiency, that is to say of the result obtained in relation to the public money injected into it. We need a different approach, and when we announce that the future boss of the tool will come from a socialist ministerial cabinet, that does not give me confidence. The person has many qualities, I am not targeting her personally and we must stop the anti-cabinet bashing, but has the time not come to offer different governance to Forem? I will be told that the management body is joint and that the president is external, but internal reluctance to change and obstruction remain. We must rethink the governance of Forem.
And depoliticize management?
Are there things that bother you in the Evras manual?
What outrages me most is that schools are being attacked. I strongly condemn these actions. And we have to put things into perspective. We are talking about twice two hours of awareness raising over a 12-year school career. It seems to me a minimum to raise awareness, awaken, relieve a series of children of guilt in relation to the questions or experiences that are theirs. I heard from someone aged 35 who would have had a better experience of being homosexual if it had been explained to him that there was no reason to feel guilty. Alas, at 12 years old,Most children have already been to porn sites. This awareness is necessary.
Three of your deputies, however, abstained on this text.
Exact. What posed a problem was the status of the guide and the way in which it was written which could suggest that this was the vocabulary to use with children. We expressed reservations at the methodological level and the minister recognized that it was a guide intended for professionals which should not be the subject of copying and pasting. But we supported the approach.
“It is not with the slogans of the left-right divide that we will achieve common work.”
With the profiles you have just recruited, do you assume hunting on the electoral lands of the MR?
If the PS does not have a monopoly on the heart, the MR does not have that on entrepreneurship. My resolutely centrist training aspires to bring together people who have left-wing and right-wing sensibilities to advance everyone, rehabilitate the common good rather than serving an electoral clientele. We are in opposition to a left which clings to achievements and a right which clings to privileges. It is not with the slogans of the left-right divide that we will achieve common work. We believed that a government combining partners from the left and the right would pursue a policy of the center. This is not the case, it is a blocking policy. Belgium performed better when the force of the center was heavier, because it was the only one capable of obtaining results between a Wallonia which leaned more and more to the left and a Flanders which was increasingly to the right.
Has the MR moved to the right, in your opinion?
The posture, the manner, the words, the aggressiveness challenge many liberals, and particularly social liberals who tell me no longer find yourself in this right-handed lineclaimed to be popular, sometimes a tad populist.
“As I speak to you, Joëlle Milquet has not expressed any wish to be a candidate.”
It is said that the presidency of the MR isolates the party from its partners, is this also the case with the Engagés?
I have a duty to maintain good relations with everyone, but there are ways of doing politics that are not mine. However, I am not excluding anyone.
Your new faces are mainly male, so you don’t risk a problem of male-female balance on your lists?
Rest assured, there will be women at the top of the list and at the Regional and Federal level, my goal is to be able to announce all the heads of the list by October 7.
Will Madame Milquet be a candidate?
She will not be head of the list, but as I speak to you, she has not expressed the wish to be a candidate.
Key phrases
- “We advocate the possibility of concentrating your full time on four days instead of five.”
- “Without a radical approach to change, we will do with Forem what we do with taxation: marginal adjustments.”
- “Belgium performed better when the central force was heavier.”
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