The protection detachment with the Royal Palace, a special body within the Federal Police with approximately 200 agents, is notably responsible for ensuring the security of members of the royal family and the various royal areas. In particular for the king, the Queen and the princess heiress Elisabeth, who are protected almost 24 hours a day.
In 4 years, the cost of security has increased by almost 40 %.
Given the “substantial increase” of costs, the nationalist Peter Buysrogge “requests more transparency” on this amount.
“In 4 years, the cost of security has increased by almost 40 %. The royal family must, of course, be able to exercise their functions safely. But this still represents a substantial additional cost, which cannot be explained only by factors such as the increase in inflation,” he explains in Het Belang Van Limburg.
The protection of Princess Elisabeth abroad in question?
Would this cost increase due to the studies abroad of Princess Elisabeth? Indeed, the future Queen of the Belgians, who spent 3 years at the University of Oxford in England, before joining Harvard, in the United States, is still accompanied by several Belgian police officers.
Princess Elisabeth could continue her studies at Harvard, but will not do so if other Belgian students were excluded
This could be a first part of explanation. But sources within the security services attribute the increase in costs to the fact that the police would be better paid than a few years ago, both in terms of salary and benefits.
More than 3 million expenses for the defense
Also according to the N-VA, the defense also spent 3.5 million euros for the palace last year: these are the costs linked to the sovereign’s military house and its unofficial trips by plane.
The press service of the Palais Royal refused to comment on this information, specifies Het Belang Van Limburg. For their part, federal police would not want to add anything to the response given by the minister to the House for “security reasons”.
