"It's not that easy to shift a debt as large as Belgium's," says economist Kristin Vandenbergen at Bank Bruxelles Lambert (BBL), as she flicks through the pages of Belgium's public debt statistics looking for the latest figures. Under the terms of the 1992 Maastricht Treaty, prospective entrants to European economic and monetary union (Emu) must meet, or make "satisfactory progress" towards meeting, a ratio of debt to GDP of 60%. They must also convince the European Commission, and ultimately the council of ministers and heads of state, that debt levels are sustainable.
Belgium's boule de neige - as the country's debt is known in Brussels - "is beginning to melt", says Vandenbergen. But at 127% of GDP the ratio is the highest in Europe. When Wilfried Martens (the prime minister before Jean-Luc Dehaene), foreign affairs minister Mark Eyskens, and finance minister Philippe Maystadt signed the Maastricht Treaty in 1992, Belgium's debt managers must have felt that they had an impossible task ahead.
By agreement with its European counterparts in 1993, the government is intent on reducing total debt by 10 GDP percentage points by the end of 1997. Hiliana Coessens, general auditor of the Belgian treasury and head of the treasury's debt department, says confidently: "We will meet this reduction by the end of the year."