Belgium’s Prince Laurent loses legal bid for benefits on top of royal allowance
Belgium’s Prince Laurent has misplaced a authorized bid to obtain social safety advantages on prime of his six-figure royal allowance, within the newest setback for the ever-controversial prince.
The 61-year-old — the youthful brother of King Philippe — had argued that his work ought to entitle him and his household to welfare on prime of his €388,000 royal allowance and rent-free lodging.
Laurent had maintained that he was partly self-employed attributable to his position as a royal and since he had run an animal welfare charity for the previous decade.
“This isn’t about monetary means however precept,” Laurent advised Belgian broadcaster RTBF.
“When a migrant comes right here, he registers, he has a proper to (social safety),” he added. “I could also be a migrant too, however one whose household established the state in place.”
Nevertheless, a courtroom in Brussels on Monday dominated towards his declare, calling it “unfounded”. The courtroom stated that Laurent can’t be categorised as self-employed or an worker.
However, the choose presiding over the case stated the prince must be entitled to a pension however that gaps in Belgian laws made this unimaginable, native media reported.
Laurent’s lawyer, Olivier Rijckaert, advised Belgian newspaper Le Soir that the prince’s request had not been primarily based on a “whim” and stated he was contemplating whether or not to attraction.
He stated most of Laurent’s allowance is spent on skilled bills similar to journey and an assistant’s wage, leaving the prince with a web month-to-month wage of about €5,000.
That determine is corresponding to the “common wage of a senior government in Belgium” however with out the conventional “full social safety protection,” Rijckaert advised Le Soir.
Laurent — who has three grownup kids along with his Anglo-Belgian associate Claire Coombs — has voiced his fears over his household’s monetary safety for the reason that royal allowance will cease upon his dying.
The prince, who’s fifteenth in line for the Belgian throne, has a protracted custom of courting controversy and has been dubbed “the cursed prince” for numerous gaffes and scandals.
In 2018, his allowance was lower after he attended an occasion on the Chinese language embassy in full naval uniform with out the Belgian authorities’s consent.
Laurent needed to pay again €16,900 in 2014 after invoicing the state for grocery payments, snowboarding holidays and his kids’s faculty charges.
In 2011, Laurent earned the wrath of then-king Albert II when he visited Congo, Belgium’s former colony, towards his father’s needs and people of the state. He was additionally criticised for attending conferences in Libya when the late Muammar Gaddafi was nonetheless in energy.
