but unusual in Europe: a Belgian deputy has spent 23 hours in a row speaking before the Finance Committee of the Belgian federal Parliament, adding up to almost 45 hours in several consecutive sessions, with the aim of delaying the adoption of a law that would allow tax authorities to cross-check banking and assets data more quickly. , this is called.
Finally, and after warning him that he was incurring repetitions, the president of the commission ended up withdrawing the floor from the former Minister of Justice and Flemish liberal deputy Vincent Van Quickenborne at 1:00 p.m. local time yesterday, Wednesday, putting an end to an intervention that had started on Tuesday.
In total, Van Quickenborne has monopolized five sessions of the commission since last October 21, to the despair of the rest of the deputies and the surprise of the Belgian press.
In the last marathon session, which he seasoned with pizzas, waffles and yogurts, he resorted to delaying maneuvers such as reviewing the complete family tree of another representative of his party or praising the people in charge of writing the minutes of the meetings.
The politician denounces that the Government’s bill, and specifically the amendment on “datamining” of tax regulations, would eliminate banking secrecy and establish the presumption of guilt, since this data would be analyzed automatically even if there is no suspicion of fraud.
He intended to obstruct the processing of the text so that it could not come into force on January 1.
Mafias, kidnappings, urine and police
Already in his time as minister, Van Quickenborne starred in several striking news stories, such as having to live especially protected due to an alleged mafia plan to kidnap him or resigning after a scandal known in Belgium as the Pipigate: The then minister celebrated his 50th birthday with a party at a private residence in August 2023 and some of his guests urinated on several occasions on a police van parked in front of the politician’s home.
Later, according to the security camera recording, the minister himself went out into the street with another friend at dawn, knocked on the door of the van, laughed and apparently gestured as if he were also urinating.
Then he said the recording was misinterpreted. He explained that he pushed the door of the van to close it, because it was open, and assured that the gestures were due to the fact that he was doing “air guitar” (pretending to play the guitar without an instrument) because he is a fan of heavy metal. A month later, he resigned.
