At the beginning of November 2006, following the official publication of the annual budget of the French community, the Prime Minister and Minister for Education, Marie Arena from the French-speaking Socialist Party (Parti Socialiste, PS [1]), issued a series of proposals for the allocation of €5
In early October 2006, the Confederation of Christian Trade Unions (Confédération des Syndicats Chrétiens/Algemeen Christelijk Vakverbond, CSC [1]/ACV [2]) published its annual statistics. CSC/ACV brings together more than 1.6 million affiliate members and plays an important role in the Belgian
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The European Lisbon Strategy [1] has placed the concept of innovation at the core of a new debate in the EU Member States. By setting an objective for 2006 that each Member State should invest a minimum of 3% of national gross domestic product (GDP) in research and development (R&D), the European
On 18 July 2006, the social partners submitted a unanimous opinion to the National Labour Council (Conseil National du Travail/Nationale Arbeidsraad, CNT/NAR [1]) on the government’s proposed bill to reform the social penal code. CNT President, Paul Windey, reported that the employers and the unions
In September 2003, the federal government launched a comprehensive reform of the service vouchers scheme, covering both administrative and financial aspects (*BE0401304F* [1]). The scheme was brought back under state control to allow it to develop further and, thereby, to encourage the creation of
Although it had been decided upon in 2003, the implementation of the restructuring [1] plan, /Défi 2007/ (Challenge 2007), gave rise to social tension during March 2006. The plan aims to ensure stable employment for 1,500 people at a site of the aeronautics company Sonaca in Gosselies in the
The transposition into Belgian law of Directive 2002/14/EC [1] on information and consultation [2] of employees has relaunched the debate over trade union representation thresholds in small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) (*EU0204207F* [3]). Following different proposals from some trade unions