Belgique 1 (Sabin Alexandre)
	Report: Sessions 1 & 2

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Belgian Report of Session 1 and Session 2

Getting to know the other ISC members

Our first session began with the explanation of the project as a whole, the chonology, details about the initiative, about IFWEA and Euro-Wea trying to answer what are the political aims and projects of these 2 institutions conducting such a project and what actions could be undertaken to make things really change.

Our second session started with the available introduction meetings of the other members in this project.

Debatting TNC investment - Understanding economic changes

We think that in Belgium there are more foreign TNC investing in our countries than Belgian one investing abroad. Due to the central position of Belgium and Brussels being the capital of Europe, lots of companies invest to benefit from the attraction of the economic pole. They also want to remain present where the political decisions are taken to lobby.

We talked about the TNC Renault whose head in France, Louis Scweitzer, decided, to delocalise the company from Vilvorde. The Belgian Justice recently sentenced Louis Scweitzer to pay 10 millions belgian francs for it ... What does it represents when you know that for 1997 Renault made a 3 billions benefice.

The same happenned with the TNC Lucas Birmingham whose belgian branch Eurofonderies closed in Belgium in October 1994 leaving all the workers unemployed. The TNC delocalise in Italy where they can afford lower work costs and better conditions. Some specific cleaning work of material that a very expensive machine did in the past is now hand made. Some workers go to the company to pick up some pieces of materials to polish then at home!

In the South part of Belgium, the province of Hainaut is benefitting from the structural funds of the European Union in the Objective 1. All of the former metal and coal industries which where the pride of the prosperity of the region are now closed which causes a very high level of unemployment for this stricken region. A recent report of the European Union showed that money allocated had not been used as foreseen in the projects. This is a result of a bad political power where few is done to encourage small and medium company to restructure and build a new economic landscape, to incourage inovating projects instead of injecting money while kowing it is only to slow the inevitable death of old industries.

Ireland which also benefits from the money of the structural fund keeps attracting TNC with « good investment » conditions.

Is it the role of the EU to finance TNC? How does the EU reacts in front of delocalisation within the Union such as Renault or the Finish lift company Kone delocalising to the home country. The European Countries are not only fighting with countries in the South-East of Asia or South America to attract investors but within the UE they are trading rivals.

Understanding Structural Adjustment

SAP : we are in the juice ! (Sap meaning juice in flemish)

SAPs are policies imposed by the World Bank and the IMF on countries from the South that seak financial aid. As far as we know there are no Structural Adjustment Programme in our small nordic country.

Reading the material on Structural Adjustment was not sad when we pointed that « Both organisations (IMF and World Bank) are dominated by the industrialised nations of the North. Voting is proportionnal to economic output and the industrial nations by a permanent majority with 60 per cent of the votes » (Sic!).

We went then to the web sites of the FMI and the World Bank.

The World Bank presently has 24 executive directors and according to the Articles of Agreement, the five largest shareholders each appoint one executive director: there are France, Germany, Japan, the United Kingdom and the United States. The other countries are grouped into constituencies, each represented by an executive director who is elected by a country or a group of countries. General operation of the bank is delegated to this smaller group of representatives, the Board of Executive Directors.

On joining the IMF, each member country contributes a certain sum of money called a quota subscription, as a sort of membership fee.

Quotas serve various purposes :

• to form a pool of money that can be redistributed
• to determine how much a contributing country can borrow from the IMF
• to determine the voting power of the members

« The founding nations reasoned in 1944 that the IMF would function most efficiently and decisions would be made most responsibly by relating members’voting power directly to the amount of money they contribute to the institution through their quotas. Those who contribute most to the IMF are therfore given the strongest voice to determining its policies. Thus, the United States now has about 265,000 votes, or about 18 percent of the total; the Marshall Islands has 275 »

The richer the country, the higher the vote and the poor countries have just to buy their debt. Find the mistake.

The point is the center of the decision. Who is really taking decisions and which ones? To interfere what is the real power of Mister Everybody, Trade Unions or based organisations?

We ended the session with a sad report. After the silent human demonstration tide in Brussels following the death of mainly Julie & Mélissa by a pedophile in Belgium people signed a petition for the government to let the prison sentence incompressible. The belgian government didn’t act and let the petition without answer so with the 2,7 million people who signed it!

What is Europe going to do with its 18 million unemployed men and women? Until when will it only consider that they not only represent 18 million people who buy less?

In these conditions it is no easy, in our western country, to consider that politicians are ready to listen to the population.

Hope we bring something more optimistic within our third session ?

M. Sabin ALEXANDRE
Begian ISC facilitator

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