From 12 August, some support measures for businesses in the Brussels-Capital Region have been temporarily suspended. A decision that concerns five types of incentives and which the Minister of Economy and Employment of Brussels, Laurent Hublet, directly attributes to the limits of available resources.
Interviewed by Trends-Tendances, the Minister explained the choice by referring to the need to respect the regional budget framework: once the planned resources are exhausted, the alternatives would be to further increase debt or to find new revenue through taxation.
Which incentives are affected
The suspension concerns five measures aimed at SMEs:
external training;
consultancy and economic transition;
consultancy for the sale or acquisition of a business;
recruitment;
coworking.
This is a temporary suspension, determined by the exhaustion of available resources for these measures during the financial year.
The decision therefore highlights a particularly relevant issue for the Brussels entrepreneurial fabric: the capacity of the regional system to maintain over time the continuity of support tools for SMEs in a context of limited public resources.
A choice linked to the budget
In the interview, Hublet defends the decision as a consequence of the need to keep regional spending under control.
The message is clear: public support for businesses must confront the actual availability of resources. When the planned budget is reached, continuing to fund the same instruments would mean finding new resources, intervening on debt or regional revenues.
The debate therefore concerns not only individual grants but more generally the priorities of Brussels' economic policy and the margin for intervention of the Region in support of businesses.
What it means for SMEs
For businesses active in Brussels, and particularly for those that had planned to resort to one of these instruments, the suspension represents a factor to consider in planning upcoming activities.
Training, consulting, recruitment, and coworking spaces are indeed areas that can accompany phases of growth, reorganisation, or development of an SME.
The decision simultaneously shows how important it is for a business to monitor not only the existence of available incentives but also their actual accessibility throughout the year, especially at a time when public resources are under increasing pressure.
Source: Trends-Tendances, “Laurent Hublet justifies the end of grants for SMEs: ‘Without a budget, we either dig into debt or we will have to raise new taxes’”, 26 August 2026