Bend It Like Belgium?
As the new government targets pensions and workers’ rights, Belgian unions are showing Europe how to fight back
Formed after months of political deadlock, Belgium’s new government led by Prime Minister Bart De Wever presents itself as a force of stability in an era of economic and social uncertainty. The so-called “Arizona coalition”, named as such for the colours of its liberal, Christian Democrat, and Flemish nationalist components, promises citizens fiscal discipline and economic recovery. Yet from its inception, its true agenda has been one that risks deepening social inequalities rather than resolving them.
At the heart of its policy programme lies a prescription familiar to workers across Europe and around the world: austerity in social spending combined with tax breaks for corporations and an emphasis on security and rearmament. While the government claims these measures are necessary to ensure Belgium’s economic competitiveness and strategic position, they also reflect a broader European pattern — one in which the working class is expected to bear the burden of crisis while capital remains largely unscathed.
Yet Belgian workers are not taking the move lying down. Belgian labour unions, historically among the strongest in Europe, have adopted an innovative strategy of rolling mobilizations that ensures opposition remains consistent and visible. The unions have called for monthly nationwide protests, drawing thousands into the streets of Brussels and other cities. While the government shows no sign of backing down just yet, they are at least in for a proper fight.
Austerity and Its Contradictions
The Arizona coalition’s economic strategy is nothing new. Belgium, like many EU member states, operates under the constraints of the European Semester, a system of economic governance that enforces strict fiscal rules. The European Council launched an excessive deficit procedure against Belgium, along with other member states, in July 2024, aiming to ensure budgetary discipline and address deficits that exceed 3 percent of GDP by 2027.
Building on this precedent, the government argues that its policies are necessary and indeed mandated by the European institutions to balance the budget and maintain investor confidence. In practice, the measures translate into concrete attacks on working-class living standards. To meet the fiscal targets, the federal government wants to implement an overall 5.4-billion-euro austerity package, including 2.7 billion in pension cuts and another 2.7 billion in reductions to healthcare and unemployment benefits.
The proposed cuts to healthcare would sharply increase out-of-pocket costs, including higher co-payments (ticket modérateur) for doctor visits, hospital care, and medications, while reducing reimbursement rates. Hospital budgets face hard reductions, risking staff shortages and longer wait times, while pharmacies may be pressured to prioritize issuing generic drugs. These reforms will disproportionately harm vulnerable groups, including low-income families and the elderly, creating a two-tier system in which adequate care is only received by those who have private insurance, and thus constitutes a step towards privatizing healthcare.
Meanwhile, the legal retirement age is set to rise to 66 in 2025 and 67 by 2030, accompanied by tougher early retirement conditions and penalties. Belgium’s comparatively generous unemployment benefits are also being slashed, to be capped at two years and adjusted only after a frustrating delay, while the family allowance that once assisted vulnerable households is to be completely scrapped. Additionally, employers will be able to dismiss new employees at one week’s notice during their probationary period, while a new benefits register is being instituted to tighten the state’s grip on household benefits.
The general secretary of Belgian’s national trade union confederation, FGTB, has described the government’s agenda as the sharpest attack on the Belgian welfare state in the last 80 years, While automatic wage indexation is to be retained for now, the unchanged wage law effectively clamps down on real salary growth, while leaving the promised net increases, like an extra 100 euro for single earners by 2029, frustratingly vague. The broadened flexi-job regime and relaxed rules for temporary and student work signal a push for more labour market flexibility, at the cost of job security and fair pay.
Finally, the De Wever government is advancing measures to restrict protest rights, including the Van Quickenborne bill allowing six-year protest bans for loosely defined “rioting” — a term critics argue is kept purposefully broad to include non-violent actions like blocking infrastructure or minor property damage. The government also plans to revise and even roll back a 2002 agreement between the unions and the state concerning workers’ right to strike.
Meanwhile, the government has flat-out refused to raise taxes on high-income earners and corporations, claiming such measures would harm “economic competitiveness”. This argument rings hollow in Belgium, a country that already imposes shockingly low taxes on corporate profits to the point of functioning as almost a hidden tax haven within the EU. The government’s position exposes its true class agenda: tightening the screws on workers through austerity while preserving a lucrative tax regime for big business and the wealthy. This blatant double standard has become impossible to ignore, fuelling mass protests against a system that privileges capital over people.
Weapons over Welfare
One of the most glaring contradictions in the government’s agenda is its decision to significantly increase defence spending. Belgium’s military budget is set to grow in alignment with NATO’s recommendations, reflecting a broader European shift toward rearmament. Defence Minister Theo Francken of the prime minister’s nationalist New Flemish Alliance (N-VA) framed this shift as necessary to address Belgium’s historical underinvestment, calling its current military readiness a “period of national disgrace” and stressing that the country “is not ready” to counter global threats.
To bridge the 4-billion-euro funding gap, the coalition plans to establish a defence fund financed through dividends from state-owned companies, asset sales, and potential EU-backed budgetary flexibility. Francken has emphasized that these investments aim to “rebuild resilience” in the armed forces, aligning with NATO targets and addressing hybrid threats from Russia and instability in the Middle East. While the EU’s 150-billion-euro joint borrowing proposal for defence offers potential support, De Wever has expressed scepticism about taking on additional debt, arguing there is no such thing as “free money” and highlighting fiscal constraints.
This decision naturally raises critical questions about national priorities that go to the heart of class politics. While education, healthcare, and social services face severe budgetary constraints, billions are being allocated to purchase new fighter jets and bolster troop numbers. This stark contrast between social austerity and military expansion is not unique to Belgium: across the EU, governments are prioritizing defence over social well-being, sending a clear message that public resources are available — just not for the working class. This contradiction between military spending and social expenditure has become a mantra uniting an increasing number of governments across Europe, abruptly aligning traditional parties with the far right—which has now dropped its anti-systemic facade to fall in line with policies of rearmament and society-wide militarization.
The Fightback Begins
Faced with this multifaceted offensive, Belgium’s labour unions have responded with a strategy of sustained mobilization, with protests planned for the thirteenth of every month. The decision carries deep symbolic weight — it marks the point in the month when many workers start to feel the pinch of stagnant wages against rising costs most acutely.
That said, this is more than mere symbolism: the 13th-of-the-month protest strategy actually predates the current government’s formation, with the first major march taking place in December 2024 — a deliberate move by unions to ramp up the pressure during coalition negotiations and signal early resistance to anticipated austerity plans. This pre-emptive mobilization served a dual purpose: on the one hand, it weakened the government’s mandate before it even took office, while also training public attention on unions’ demands from day one. By the time De Wever’s coalition was sworn in, the monthly rhythm of protest was already entrenched, turning the thirteenth into a recurring deadline for discontent.
Far from spontaneous, the mobilizations represented a calculated attrition tactic, making each mid-month protest a stepping stone towards larger actions and ensuring that austerity’s opponents — and not the government — controlled the narrative from the outset. This tactic reached its first major peak on 13 February, when 100,000 protesters flooded the streets of Brussels, a scale unseen since 2014, when the then-Michel government imposed its first wave of welfare cuts and a wage freeze. The unions then announced that, should the new government persist with its plans, the labour movement would escalate and enter the next phase of resistance — a full general strike.
Belgium’s nationwide general strike on 31 March brought the country to a standstill. The transport sector suffered severe disruptions: all outgoing flights from the Brussels and Charleroi airports were grounded, while rail services operated at less than 50-percent capacity, suspending most peak-hour trains and international routes to Germany, Austria, and the Netherlands. Public transit in Brussels nearly collapsed. Port blockades stranded 30 ships in Antwerp-Bruges, while steelworkers at ArcelorMittal’s Ghent plant joined the walkout. The education sector saw massive participation, with over 34,000 Flemish teachers striking — a historic number — forcing widespread school closures. While public services like postal delivery and waste collection halted, healthcare maintained emergency operations. Employers’ groups estimated 500 million euro in losses, warning of damage to Belgium’s reputation as the strikes reinforced the country’s image as a “strike-prone” nation.
The movement is also being reinforced by recurring sectoral strikes. In education, teachers in Wallonia and Brussels held a 48-hour strike on 27–28 January. Meanwhile, railway workers staged a nine-day strike in March, followed by coordinated 24-hour walkouts every Tuesday in April. These actions specifically target the government’s planned pension reforms that would raise the retirement age from 65 to 67 and impose 675 million in cuts to rail services.
The protesters’ demands provide a glimpse of what mass working-class resistance can look like: cancel the pension and healthcare cuts and raise corporate taxes, protect wage indexation and workers’ rights against deregulation, maintain the current retirement age, and redirect military spending towards social needs. They reject the Van Quickenborne protest law and EU-imposed austerity, framing their fight as a battle to defend social protections from corporate-friendly policies.
Particularly interesting is how this wave of protests is serving as a unifying force among diverse social demands and groups, highlighting a renewed alliance between the labour movement and younger generations. Potentially, an even more powerful coalition could be taking shape.
When Life Gives You Lemons…
Belgium’s centre-left parties currently find themselves in a contradictory and ambiguous position. While the Flemish Social Democrats, Vooruit, are participating directly in the governing coalition, emphasizing their moderating role, Wallonia’s Socialist Party (PS) has joined the protests alongside the Greens. Yet these so-called “progressive” traditional parties carry years of governmental experience, during which they themselves often imposed austerity. Neither the Social Democrats nor, for that matter, the Greens have ever seriously challenged or broken with the dogma of budgetary adjustments and working-class sacrifice, nor have they pursued fiscal reforms to restore resources for public investment and redistribution.
Thus, the Belgian Workers’ Party (PVDA/PTB) has found it relatively straightforward to position itself as the party of genuine rupture — both through concrete legislative proposals and by championing working-class demands within trade union mobilizations and labour organizations. Following this strategy, the party launched its provocative “On n’est pas des citrons” (We’re not lemons) campaign in early 2025, mobilizing workers against austerity with biting symbolism. Framing labourers as “lemons squeezed dry” by corporate greed and De Wever’s neoliberal policies, the campaign targeted pension cuts, attacks on wage indexation, and 5.4 billion euro in social service reductions — juxtaposed with generous corporate subsidies.
Its 13 February demonstration under the motto “Everyone onto the streets for 13 February” saw workers and students flood the streets wielding lemon-themed stickers and placards that likened modern deregulation to brutal early-twentieth-century exploitation. By merging grassroots theatrics with sharp class-struggle rhetoric, the PTB turned the lemon into a viral emblem of resistance.
Alongside and amplifying these union efforts, the PTB has been gaining significant traction with its creative campaign — a direct, visceral attack on price gouging and corporate profiteering that has resonated with ordinary citizens. By doing so, the PTB’s influence continues to grow — particularly among young people and working-class voters.
Class Struggle on a European Scale
The situation in Belgium is far from an isolated event, but is rather a concentrated expression of broader class struggles playing out across the continent. Since 2022, Europe has seen a significant surge in strike activity. In France, massive protests against pension reforms in 2023 led to widespread disruptions, including public transport cancellations and garbage piling up in the streets. The UK experienced widespread strikes in public services like transport and healthcare. Germany faced labour unrest in the aviation sector, with strikes affecting major airports like Frankfurt and Munich.
The primary driver behind this resurgence of industrial action is undoubtedly the deteriorating living conditions of Europe’s working class. Since the pandemic, the long-term decline in workers’ living standards — already under strain since the 2008 crisis — has accelerated sharply. Inflationary spikes exacerbated an already dire situation.
While workers across the continent have seen their purchasing power erode, windfall profits from inflation — protected by European Central Bank policies like interest rate hikes — have further polarized wealth distribution. Capital incomes are shielded, while labour incomes enjoy no such protection.
Worsening global economic imbalances further sharpened economic contradictions that, under the pressure of trade wars and armed conflicts reaching European shores, are now reaching a fever pitch. In just over two years, EU economies have entered structural difficulties, with the spectre of deindustrialization becoming a reality even in what was long Europe’s economic engine, Germany.
To resolve this crisis, Europe’s ruling classes — in both member states as well as EU institutions — are pursuing a dual approach: on the one hand continuing austerity policies that suppress incomes and redistributive investments, while on the other attempting to regain global competitiveness through massive investments in the arms sector. Regardless of their claimed economic rationale or effectiveness, these decisions reveal an unmistakable class character: disciplining labour through reduced purchasing power and imposing a war economy, in which the external enemy comes paired with a domestic threat. The silencing of social dialogue, increased workplace discipline, and the imminent channelling of savings into arms production — all typical features of wartime mobilization — are becoming glaringly apparent.
What Can Be Done?
For now, the government appears determined to push forward with its programme regardless of opposition. The strategy strongly recalls the Thatcherite tactic of the iron fist, more recently revived by Emmanuel Macron in France. But while the government demonstrates ironclad intransigence — attempting to discredit protests through various means while increasingly adopting far-right rhetoric — the protest movement has deep roots in society. Indeed, next escalation is already planned for 29 April.
Europe’s ruling classes have largely abandoned the carrot, preferring to negotiate with the stick alone. Yet the persistence — and potential growth — of struggles in Belgium and across Europe suggests a path forward.
During the 2008 crisis, the disparities in conditions between different European countries and the consequent fragmentation of working-class interests was evident. Today, we can observe an objective uniformity in conditions across EU member states, thus raising the prospect of a coordinated, labour-driven response. Creating unity of purpose and struggles is not only necessary, but is now probably more achievable than a decade ago.
Capitalizing on these conditions, however, requires the labour movement to develop and subsequently articulate a clear vision. In this struggle, radical working-class parties play a crucial role. As social conflict intensifies, these parties can serve as a unifying force, organizing the most combative sections of the working class while simultaneously pushing trade unions towards genuinely confrontational struggle. More crucially still, they must articulate a coherent, systemic vision for these struggles — enabling workers to recognize their universal and transformative potential beyond mere defensive battles, as such defensive postures are ultimately doomed to defeat without a forward-looking offensive strategy.
The ruling class’s violent offensive in fact mirrors their crumbling hegemony. Thus, it falls decisively to radical working-class parties not simply to participate in struggles, but actively foster the collective construction of a counter-hegemonic force. While the PTB has taken some steps in this direction, both the scale and stakes of the conflict demand greater decisiveness and boldness from them, as well.
A number of questions remain unanswered. Will unions in Belgium and across the continent not only withstand the pressure and continue the struggle, but also avoid retreating into defensive corporatism and old allegiances to a dying social comprise? Will workers’ organizations — both trade unions and political parties — be able to defend not just their material conditions, but also put forward an alternative path for collective well-being and peaceful coexistence? Can they become counter-hegemonic projects in the Gramscian sense, capable of exerting social and political leadership and command the support of millions?
The struggle of Belgium’s working class constitutes an organic moment in Europe’s unfolding class confrontation, as capital’s crisis-management strategies increasingly assume catastrophic dimensions. Let us hope that workers across the continent follow their example.
Federico Tomasone is a project manager at the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation’s Brussels Office, where he works on trade unions, global social rights, and agriculture, as well as the office’s projects in Italy.