Belgian trade unions have called for a three-day nationwide strike in protest against the government's austerity plan

Belgium's major trade unions launched a three-day nationwide strike on Monday (November 24th) to protest the government's austerity plan to reduce the national debt.

The strike will be carried out in three phases. Railway and other public transport service workers took the lead in the strike on Monday. It is expected that only one or two out of every three trains of the Belgian National Railway Company (SNCB) will be in operation, and several Eurostar train services connecting Brussels and Paris have also been cancelled.

Public service sectors such as schools, nurseries and hospitals will join the strike on Tuesday (the 25th). The local trade union has called for a full-scale strike covering all industries on Wednesday (the 26th).

There are expected to be no flights taking off or landing at Belgium's two major airports, Bruxelles-Zaventem and Charleroi, on Wednesday.

Belgium is one of the European countries with the highest debt. Hours before the strike began, the five-party coalition led by Prime Minister Dwever broke the weeks-long deadlock and reached an agreement on a multi-year budget plan overnight. This plan will significantly increase government spending and open up new sources of revenue by raising certain value-added taxes and investment taxes, etc.

After the agreement was reached, Dwecver wrote on the social media platform X: "Work hard today and you'll reap the rewards tomorrow." In a later media interview, he admitted, "We still have a big mountain to climb," and said that everyone would feel the impact of the budget.

Since taking office in February, Dwecver has been striving to implement a series of unprecedented structural reforms in areas such as labor market liberalization, unemployment benefits, and pensions. Due to severe internal divisions within the ruling coalition, only a small portion of the measures he proposed have been implemented so far.

Several unions that initiated the strike said in a statement that the action was aimed at pressuring Dwecver and the entire government to stop "dismantling social welfare programs".