Salocin

Belgian bureaucracy

I love my country, and so when this article was pointed out to me by a friend, I would have dearly loved to disagree with it. Unfortunately, (apart from the drink driving thing, which is violently enforced in my part of Brussels), the article is more or less spot on. Stupid laws executed and enforced by self-important petty bureaucrats who know they can't be fired and have nothing better to do than make other people's lives difficult. Belgium's a great place, with lots of things going for it, but its bureaucracy is a bit screwed up.

While we're at it, let me put a few of my own examples up.

• Car radio tax - mentioned in the article, this is true, I got the bill the day my car was registered.
  
• Special tax on Diesel cars - since diesel costs less than other forms of gas, they hit the owners of these cars with a special tax "to even the playing field"
  
• Trash bags - the payment for trash collection services is collected by making you buy special trash bags with the local council's seal on the side, and only these will be collected. This has resulted in a new Belgian crime: people now steal trash bags from supermarkets.
  
• Courts system screwed - the laws provide lots of support and protection for the victims of crime, provided they're willing to wait up to eight years to have their case heard.
  

On the flip side, we've got a fantastic health system, nice people (for the most part), a great capital city, a beautiful country, historic cities and towns and entrepreneurial talent so strong even the punitive Belgian tax system hasn't managed to crush it, although it continues to try.

Posted by nlvp at July 18, 2003 05:59 PM