Belgium looks on as jobs vanish

Officially, there is no talk of “restructuring” but rather of “consolidating positions”. The German company DHL has just announced to 788 of its staff that their jobs were to be relocated to Prague, Leipzig and Bonn. This relocation comes on top of the 2,000 jobs under threat at the Opel factory in Antwerp and the sacking of 43 Sanofi employees in Diegem.

Belgium hosts many foreign companies and Le Soir is concerned that it “no longer has control over its jobs” as well as expressing its doubts about “the effectiveness of Belgian economic policy over the last twenty years”. “There didn’t seem to many people who were that bothered by some major economic actors leaving our country,” remarks the Brussels daily, “nor even to demand, at the very least, that they keep their Belgian factories and offices open in the long term. Alienated by the conflicts between its language communities and steeped in a sentiment of European belonging sometimes verging on naivety, the country has stood and watched as its family jewels have been sold off."