Can Bouchez close Belgium’s €10 billion budget gap without raising taxes?

MR president Georges-Louis Bouchez said in Braine-l’Alleud on Sunday, 6 September, that Belgium should close a €10 billion budget gap by 2029 without raising VAT or imposing an additional tax on large fortunes. At his party’s autumn gathering near Waterloo, he presented a still-unpublished programme containing €16 billion to €17 billion in potential savings across Belgium’s different levels of government and identified what he called “colossal abuses” in healthcare as one place to look. No measure has yet been agreed by the federal coalition, and MR has not released enough detail to verify how much its proposals would save.

The intervention establishes MR’s position before the federal budget conclave, where Prime Minister Bart De Wever’s five-party coalition must reconcile deficit reduction with higher defence, interest and ageing-related expenditure. Reporting by Belga, carried by The Brussels Times and Belgian healthcare publication Healthcare Executive, says Bouchez wants the adjustment to come entirely from lower public spending and stronger economic growth. He also argued that Belgium’s hospital landscape remains too large, questioned aspects of the increased-reimbursement status known as BIM and advocated a leaner civil service, fewer elected offices and the abolition of provincial government.

Bouchez’s quantified plan is much broader than the federal budget alone: its €16 billion to €17 billion headline covers all levels of government and measures with different implementation dates. That distinction matters in Belgium, where the federal government finances compulsory health insurance but regions, communities, provinces and municipalities control other large spending areas. Savings assigned to another level of government do not automatically improve the federal balance, while abolishing institutions or reorganising hospitals can require legislation, negotiations and transition costs. MR has not published a measure-by-measure timetable, baseline or estimate certified by the Federal Planning Bureau or the federal Monitoring Committee.

The fiscal pressure itself is well documented. The European Commission’s spring forecast put Belgium’s general-government deficit at 5.2% of GDP in both 2025 and 2026, compared with the EU treaty reference value of 3%. It expects public debt to rise from 107.9% of GDP in 2025 to 110.5% in 2026 and 112.8% in 2027. Belgium remains under the EU’s excessive-deficit procedure, and the Commission says further consolidation is needed even after the reforms already adopted. Forecast growth of only 0.7% in 2026 makes it harder to rely on economic expansion alone to repair the accounts.

Healthcare is an obvious budget target because of its scale, but scale is not evidence of abuse. Belgium’s National Institute for Health and Disability Insurance, RIZIV-INAMI, set the total 2026 health-insurance budget at €46.775 billion. Within that envelope, authorised reimbursement spending is €40.986 billion, €1.274 billion or 3.2% more than in 2025. The agency says the budget already contains corrective and efficiency measures intended to limit inappropriate or unnecessary care without undermining quality or access. Separately, the federal government has fixed almost €11.99 billion for hospitals’ operating costs in 2026.

Bouchez singled out BIM, the status that reduces patients’ personal healthcare costs. Some groups receive it automatically because of their social status, while others qualify after an income assessment; Bouchez argued that the system lacks sufficient checks on assets in some cases. The unresolved questions are how many beneficiaries he considers ineligible, what an asset test would cost to administer and how much it could recover. Without those figures, “colossal abuses” remains a political allegation rather than a quantified budget item. Changes that remove support from eligible low-income patients could also delay treatment and shift costs elsewhere in the health system.

For households, the choice between taxes and spending reductions is tangible. A broad VAT increase would feed directly into the prices of affected goods and services and could weigh particularly heavily on households that spend most of their income. That concern is sharper because the Commission forecasts Belgian inflation of 3.4% in 2026, up from 3.0% in 2025, while weakening purchasing power is expected to slow private consumption. Spending cuts, however, are not costless: reduced reimbursements, tighter BIM eligibility or hospital consolidation can appear as larger medical bills, longer journeys or reduced access rather than as a line labelled “tax” on a payslip.

Businesses face a similar trade-off. MR argues that avoiding additional taxation and cutting regulation would protect investment and entrepreneurship. Yet a persistently large deficit raises the government’s financing needs and interest bill, while uncertainty over the eventual package complicates planning for employers, hospitals and social-sector organisations. The European Commission identifies higher defence and interest expenditure as important reasons why Belgium’s deficit could widen again to 5.4% of GDP in 2027 despite current consolidation measures.

The coalition’s internal argument is therefore about both arithmetic and distribution. MR maintains that the coalition agreement limits revenue measures to roughly one ninth of the total adjustment and says that allowance has already been used. Parties favouring a broader contribution from capital or high wealth can answer that expenditure-only consolidation concentrates risk on users of public services and benefit recipients. Healthcare stakeholders, meanwhile, can accept efforts against fraud and low-value care while demanding clinical evidence before budgets, hospitals or patient entitlements are reduced.

The next decisive step is publication of MR’s growth and savings plan, followed by scrutiny of each measure’s legal competence, recurring yield and implementation date. The federal budget conclave will then show whether Bouchez’s tax veto can survive coalition bargaining. Until a costed agreement emerges, the government’s €10 billion objective is confirmed, but neither the final mix of savings and revenue nor the household impact is known.