Gas bills for this month are expected to be 50% higher than for the same period last year, Professor Johan Albrecht from Ghent University told Het Nieuwsblad. The estimate takes into account a 20% increase in gas prices. Suppliers have already delivered 38% more gas to private customers than in...

Belgium’s parliamentary finance and budget committee is examining the idea of whether to reform the mechanism providing tax relief to Belgian companies that invest in the cinema and audiovisual industry, writes Tax News’s Ulrika Lomas . The scheme, implemented after a 2003 Royal Decree, attracted...

Employers are increasingly using private investigators to spy on staff according to a report by the Commons’ home affairs committee on private detectives, reports De Tijd. The CSC union even talks of the existence of a network of about 50 detectives who help companies find incriminating material...

After Mini-Europe and Océade, the Kinepolis cinema complex could be the next to disappear from the Heysel site in Brussels, reports Flanders News . Kinepolis is said to have violated a policy agreement with the Brussels authorities by organising too many seminars, trade congresses and product...

Bozar has unveiled its 2013/14 season – known as Music Lifts You Up – under the command of new music director Ulrich Hauschild. With extensive international experience under his belt, the German takes over the baton from Christian Renard, who reigned over the department for 21 years. Hauschild’s...

Where better than Brussels to put on an exhibition about the Tower of Babel? All those languages! All that confusion! And at Botanique as well, in the shadow of the Finance Tower. Perfect! But I’m getting carried away with the old version of the Babel story as it appears in the Book of Genesis...

As with many important life skills such as developing and maintaining successful relationships or having and raising children, money management is not taught at school. For many of us what follows is a consequence of personality, cultural background and habits formed early in life. A sensible...

Librarian Katia De Pooter, 35, from Bornem talks about what she earns and how she spends it. What do you do for a living? I work at the local public library, where I’m in charge of children’s books and everything youth-related. So I organise visits from school groups, I’m also responsible for our...

A growing number of asylum seekers in Belgium cite their homosexuality as the reason for applying, saying they fled their country because of homophobia and the violence that accompanies it, reports Het Laatste Nieuws. In 2011, 823 such applications were made, compared to 116 in 2006. Of the 522...

Belgium risks being fined for missing its 2012 budget target and needs a convincing plan to rein in its deficit this year and next without relying on one-off measures, the Economic Times quotes an EU official as saying yesterday. Belgium’s government had aimed to reduce the public sector deficit to...