Everything is more expensive when you are alone: ​​'Singles are not commercially and politically interesting'

Change after the elections?

There has been political awareness about the fate of single people for some time, but precisely because they are a diverse group, it is not politically interesting. Right now, initiatives like All1 carry so little weight that they can't really influence policy. There is no such thing as a union of singles.

“It's not that politicians do nothing at all,” says Bart Verhulst, political journalist at VRT NWS. “For example, the Flemish government wrote an ‘individual reaction’ into the coalition agreement in 2019. This means that every new tax or decision is examined to see if it is inappropriate for single people.”

Federal Finance Minister Vincent van Peteghem's tax reform (CD&V) also included plans to eliminate inequality between families and individuals. Because no agreement was reached on reform, these plans were also shelved.

There is no shortage of plans at the moment: the Flemish Association of Cities and Municipalities (VVSG) is preparing a guide for local authorities on single people's problems.

At the beginning of 2023, Ilse van Hove (CD&V) introduced a single resolution in Parliament. This must, among other things, address the problem of poverty experienced by single people. Here, too, it remains a matter of the future for the time being, because most of the concrete measures of the resolution can only be included in the next coalition agreement.