In the past, our policymakers knew that a budget couldn't be balanced without the help of a strong economic engine, writes Geert Noels. Today, most members of the government lack that insight.
At the end of 2025, there were 576,643 people on long-term sick leave—a record high. Including civil servants, the total is close to 700,000; without intervention, that number will rise to 870,000 by 2030. That costs us 11 to 14 billion euros per year, depending on whether you calculate it conservatively or include civil servants and social impacts. People on long-term sick leave cost society much more than the unemployed and those on early retirement. Anyone advocating for a basic income is too late: in Belgium, many people have already claimed it for themselves.
That is a socioeconomic disaster, and our system of health insurance funds and labor unions ensures that it can no longer be reversed. Random surveys show that a significant proportion of people on long-term sick leave are actually able to work. Feel free to call that the biggest case of social fraud ever in this country.
Meanwhile, the public sector employs 1 million full-time equivalents, while the private sector is bleeding out and highly productive jobs in sectors such as IT, AI, and pharmaceuticals are proving difficult to fill—that is, if the companies in question don’t relocate due to the exorbitant labor costs. The private sector is shrinking; the public sector is growing. In Belgium, 31 percent of the population works in the private sector; in the Netherlands, that figure is 41 percent. There are 1.2 million fewer people working in the private sector in this country than in the Netherlands. That is an unsustainable economic model.
The root of Belgium’s problem lies on the spending side. Belgium currently spends 9.3 percentage points of GDP more on primary expenditures (excluding interest) than it did in 2000. That amounts to more than 60 billion euros extra per year—every year. Unfortunately, no one wants to face the truth when it really counts: when the budget is being drawn up.
