Expatica news

Unemployment and communities on agenda

30 October 2007

BRUSSELS – Formateur Yves Leterme (CD&V) and the Christian democrat and liberal negotiators finished talks at 11 pm on Monday and were back at the table Tuesday morning at 9 am. Tuesday evening there will be a plenary meeting on the problems between Belgium’s linguistic communities.

There will also be bilateral talks on the difficult dossiers regarding labour market policy. The Christian democrats and liberals have not been able to agree on unemployment benefits and temporary workers. The discussion on this will resume today, sources from the parties involved have reported.

After the bilateral talks on Monday attention was briefly paid to the budget and the problems between the linguistic communities. The discussion primarily focused on making working agreements, however, and on listing the problems in those areas. Tuesday night there will be another plenary meeting to discuss these matters in further detail.

Other items that will be discussed during today’s meetings include social security, pensions, and poverty.

In the meantime much progress has been made in the talks on healthcare. There were few points of serious disagreement in those talks, according to sources close to the negotiations.

[Copyright Expatica News 2007]

Subject: Belgian news