Why is Annick De Ridder under fire over subsidies for Deurne and Ostend airports?

Flemish Minister for Mobility, Public Works, Ports and Sport Annick De Ridder will face an additional hearing in the Flemish Parliament on 10 September over the government’s financial agreements with the operator of Antwerp-Deurne and Ostend-Bruges airports. The hearing was scheduled after Flemish opposition parties demanded further scrutiny of a settlement with French airport operator Egis and of reports that the Flemish Inspectorate of Finance had repeatedly issued an unfavourable opinion. De Ridder disputes that the inspectorate’s concerns were ignored and says the Flemish government collectively approved the arrangement after obtaining external legal advice.

The controversy centres on two connected decisions. The Flemish government approved new funding arrangements intended to reduce the airports’ reliance on public support, while also concluding a settlement, or dading, resolving disputed claims between the Flemish Region and Egis. The settlement became public after De Ridder’s office inadvertently placed it on the parliament’s intranet. According to reporting by De Standaard and Het Nieuwsblad, Egis abandoned a claim for €14.83 million in allegedly unpaid subsidies, while Flanders waived a claim for €12.1 million in personnel costs owed by the operator. Egis is expected to pay two outstanding 2025 invoices by 1 January 2028 and to pay new invoices on time.

The document also refers to subsidies continuing until the Egis concession expires in October 2039, well beyond the current 2024-2029 Flemish legislative term. That does not necessarily fix the amount future governments must provide: Het Nieuwsblad reported that subsequent Flemish governments could still reduce the sums. It nevertheless gives the dispute constitutional and political weight because one administration has set expectations extending across several electoral cycles. The planned 10 September hearing will test whether the arrangement preserves sufficient budgetary freedom and whether parliament received the information needed to exercise meaningful oversight.

De Ridder’s defence has two parts. First, she says the settlement clears away long-running legal and accounting disputes that had prevented the government and operator from putting their relationship on a stable footing. In the Flemish Parliament on 24 June, she described the objective as making a ‘clean sweep’ of past disputes so the airports could restart on a clearer basis. Second, she argues that public money under the new model is concentrated on non-commercial public tasks, including airport security, firefighting equipment and infrastructure required by international rules. At the 22 July committee meeting, she said economic investment subsidies would no longer be available under the same arrangement and insisted that the government was not writing a blank cheque.

The opposition reads the package differently. Groen MP Bogdan Vanden Berghe argues that combining subsidies, concession payments and other financial flows creates the impression of a 26.8 per cent reduction without demonstrating an equivalent fall in subsidies themselves. In committee, he calculated that the guaranteed support per passenger at Deurne could rise sharply when TUI ends its Antwerp services in 2027; that calculation is an opposition estimate rather than an independently audited forecast. Anders MPs Jasper Pillen and Eva De Bleeker have accused the minister of misleading parliament about how far the agreement was adjusted in response to the Inspectorate of Finance. Independent MP Maurits Vande Reyde and Vlaams Belang MP Tom Lamont have also sought further disclosure.

De Ridder rejects that account. In her response reported by Het Nieuwsblad on 30 July, she said the file had been changed on several points following the inspectorate’s comments and that the government had weighed those comments alongside independent legal advice. She also defended confidentiality for commercially and legally sensitive passages while stressing that MPs could inspect the settlement under parliamentary rules. ‘I have nothing to hide,’ she said when confirming that she was prepared to explain the decision again. The unresolved question is not whether advice existed, but how the government balanced it and whether the resulting safeguards answer the financial and European-law concerns attributed to the inspectorate.

The dispute sits within a much older structural problem. Flanders owns the basic infrastructure of its regional airports through airport development companies, while airport operating companies run Antwerp and Ostend. The arrangements date from reforms launched in the previous decade, but disagreements persisted after an earlier subsidy agreement expired and continued provisionally. A 2022 social cost-benefit analysis commissioned by Flanders found that only strong growth scenarios substantially reduced the need for public support. VRT NWS also reported in 2023 that federal financing of air-traffic services at Antwerp and Ostend had not been included in that Flemish assessment. Competence is therefore divided: Flanders decides regional airport infrastructure and operating support, while the federal government helps finance air-navigation services through Skeyes.

European Union law forms a third layer. Public authorities may finance genuinely non-economic functions such as certain security, firefighting and safety duties, but support for commercial airport activity can fall under EU state-aid rules. De Ridder says the new agreements distinguish between economic and non-economic costs. The reported warning from the Inspectorate of Finance about possible unlawful aid makes the legal classification important, although no European Commission finding of illegality has been reported. The distinction will depend on the detailed agreements and their implementation, not simply on the label attached to an expense.

For Antwerp and Ostend, the practical stakes differ. De Ridder presents Deurne as a business airport serving Antwerp’s port and diamond economy, while opponents emphasise its losses, declining commercial traffic and private-jet use. Ostend combines passenger services with cargo, training and coastal economic functions. Employees, nearby residents and businesses therefore have different interests in continuity, noise, land use and public spending. The immediate political test comes on 10 September, when MPs are expected to examine the inspectorate’s advice, the government’s legal reasoning, the treatment of mutual claims and the true budget path. Until those documents are fully tested in parliament, the claimed saving, the longer-term cost and the exposure to EU state-aid action remain contested rather than settled facts.