Withdrawing money from an ATM can be a complicated gesture in recent years. Not all Belgian citizens have equal access to these cash points. Example in Courcelles, in the province of Hainaut. Courcelles has 31,400 inhabitants for 5 distributors currently.
If the city center seems well served, this is not the case of Gouy-lez-Piéton. Very often, it is the merchants who have to make up for this lack. “We use bancontact. All the merchants of Gouy use bancontact. Small 20 euros, 10 euros more to have a little change”, testifies Christophe, manager of a bakery.
We told you about it yesterday, under the terms of an agreement, ATMs will be installed in 207 additional locations across the country by the end of 2025. For Caroline Taquin, mayor of Courcelles, the “new plan is not ambitious enough. If you live in town, you’re lucky, you can have money easily in cash. But if you live in the countryside, you stay on the floor.”
In a neighboring village of Gouy-lez-Piéton, a cash point was installed three months ago. What simplify the life of the inhabitants. “We had to hit the villages nearby. For the elderly or people with reduced mobility, there were buses to try to get cash”, testifies a resident in the car. Another continued, “It’s handy. I’m from Forchies and around here, there aren’t many ATMs.” A final sums up: “It clearly simplifies life.”
The right of access to cash is ignored, deplore several organizations.
“The government and the banking sector ignore the right to access cash“, reacted Friday evening, in a joint press release, Financité, Test Achats and Okra. They consider “insufficient” the agreement reached earlier in the day providing for the installation of more than 200 new ATMs in by the end of 2025.
The agreement does not meet the list of requirements made by the organisations, which demanded at least 5,900 distributors, i.e. the number of distributors that Belgium had at the end of 2021. The organizations also demanded that at least 95% of the population has access to a distributor offering the basic assortment (withdrawal, deposit, etc.) within 2.5 km by road.
They also claimed that each municipality has a number of devices equivalent to at least one automaton per 1,500 inhabitants. “The federal authorities and Febelfin have reached a largely insufficient agreement on the ATM file. The needs and rights of consumers are thus ignored”, deplore the three organizations. The latter had launched, at the beginning of March, a petition against the disappearance of distributors having meanwhile collected more than 17,500 signatures, proving that “access to cash is a concern for many Belgians”.