New Friday deadline set in crisis talks on DHL jobs, night flights
Belgium_Prime Minister Guy Verhofstadt on Wednesday set a new end-of-week deadline for regional leaders to agree on a compromise to keep courier company DHL and its thousands of jobs in Belgium.
Deputy Prime Minister Laurette Onkelinx said the prime minister wanted a final deal by Friday.
“We will take stock of the talks on Friday, and we will continue with bilateral talks until then,” Onkelinx said.
Verhofstadt, who was released from the hospital Wednesday after a car crash, was working from home to try to wrap up talks that threaten to bring down his coalition government, officials said.
His spokesman Didier Seeuws said the prime minister would continue to work from home “behind the scenes to find a solution.”
The prime minister suffered two broken ribs and bruises in the crash on the way home from negotiations late Tuesday.
Verhofstadt and his driver were injured after their car struck a concrete pillar and rolled over several times on a highway near the prime minister’s home in Ghent, 50 kilometers (30 miles) northwest of Brussels.
The crisis talks centered on a proposal to allow DHL to increase night flights over Brussels. The company has threatened to pull the plug on its Brussels European hub and move elsewhere if it is prevented from expanding.
Aircraft noise is sensitive issue, and two regional governments _ Brussels and Flanders _ object to increasing night flights over the capital and, potentially, over other towns around the airport at Zaventem, which is just outside the capital.
The two sides were huddled in separate talks mulling Verhofstadt’s compromise offer under which night flights would be increased by 3,000 a year but noise would be reduced through an upgrade of DHL’s planes.
Yves Leterme, leader of the government in Flanders, said he “was working hard to find a solution” but suggested the upgrade of DHL’s planes be done as soon as possible, and not in 2010, as Verhofstadt proposed.
The issue of whether to allow DHL to expand its European hub has become a make-or-break issue for Verhofstadt’s liberal-socialist coalition government, which was elected on a job-boosting platform.
Twenty hours of marathon talks which were suspended Tuesday failed to get a deal to hand to DHL, which wanted a Tuesday answer from the Belgian government whether it could expand or not in Belgium.
DHL spokesman Xavier De Buck said his company had agreed to extend the deadline to Friday.
The government backed DHL’s demand for more flights, and Verhofstadt hoped Brussels and Dutch-speaking authorities in northern Belgium could be swayed to accept more night flights over their territory.
Newspapers were not optimistic a deal could be reached, or that Verhofstadt’s coalition could weather the crisis.
Verhofstadt said Tuesday that “several thousand jobs” could be lost if the regional authorities did not accept his plan.
If DHL moves its hub, it is likely to pick Leipzig, Germany, or Vatry, France. That could cost Belgium at least 1,800 jobs.
Unions fear that if DHL leaves, other companies that rely on its operations might leave as well.
The company provides direct and indirect employment for about 5,800 people and is Zaventem international airport’s biggest employer.
DHL is owned by Germany’s Deutsche Post World Net.
