The mayors say no
The mayors of the 19 Brussels municipalities will not collaborate in the implementation of the new federal law on rents as long as the federal state does not give them the means to do so. The mayors of the 19 Brussels municipalities will not collaborate in the implementation of the new federal law on rents as long as the federal state does not give them the means to do so. Municipalities are supposed to carry out checks on compliance with the obligation to specify the amount of rent and charges on posters and in classified ads, recalls the Dutch-speaking site “brusselnieuws.be”. The decision not to collaborate was taken unanimously within the Conference of Mayors, an advisory body. For Brussels mayors, this is a federal competence which mobilizes the municipalities without them having received the means to act. According to them, municipalities should however hire staff to walk the streets of the capital and note violations punishable by fines of 50 to 200 euros. The new law on rents came into force at the beginning of the current year. Displaying the amount of rent and charges has been mandatory since May 18 (La Libre, 03/10/2007).
The mayors are undoubtedly right to defy the State by refusing the application of an inappropriate law. Yet they only do so for reasons of means, and in a country where the State is the object of widespread distrust and rejection. But there would be another, even more relevant reason to refuse the application of this law: it is not the role of the State to specify the information which must appear in advertisements for private transactions. The State could fulfill its role by generally guaranteeing the sincerity and transparency of these transactions before its courts.
This is not the case since it is very difficult to get justice done. The public prosecutor’s office’s policy is to close cases if, in its eyes, they do not represent a sufficient degree of seriousness or proportionality between the amount of the dispute and the investigation costs incurred – a serious error in reasoning, since the public prosecutor’s office does not It’s not a private company looking for a return on investment. A strange failure is that of this State which is everywhere there, it has no place to be, but is never where it should be.
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