This survey, originally planned to include 4,500 respondents, thus remained restricted to a sample of 246 people. Despite this restriction, say the researchers, there is no doubting the substance and the quality of the research tool. They thus treated this survey with the reservations necessitated by a reduced sample, but this did not prevent them from to make certain enlightening observations within the context of the battle against fraud.

The study was launched with the acronym ‘SUBLEC’, for ‘Survey of the black economy.’ It was not restricted to undeclared work and compulsory social tax fraud, but also covers social security fraud and all the possible forms of social fraud. Its aim is to inform the political authorities of the scale of the fraud and to frame recommendations with a view to improving the battle against the various phenomena studied.

The method which was settled on was that of an in-depth oral interview, face to face and in the two major national languages, on the basis of a structured sample made up of the Belgian population aged 18 to 75, identified through the various social security parastatal institutions. The sample was established by the Crossroads Bank for Social Security (BCSS),  which broke it down into 17 categories representative of the overall population (active, non-active, private and public sector employees, the self employed, various social security benefit recipients, etc.). The people selected had to be contacted in writing by the BCSS, in order to ask for their agreement to participate in the investigation. And only the people who gave a positive response could be contacted by the investigators. This restriction could obviously produce distortions in the responses obtained, due to the indiscreet and ‘delicate’ nature of the questions asked. In the final analysis the researchers were able to work with a response group of 246 people, which corresponds to a good pilot study. Participation already presents a certain selectiveness as regards response. The self-employed, the unemployed and home-makers responded less, whilst pensioners, people active in the hotel-restaurant-café sector, public administration, teaching and healthcare responded proportionally higher.

Four Belgians out of ten buy ‘on the black’

The investigation’s results indicate that 38.8% of the Belgian population has bought a product or a service (cleaning, plumbing, gardening, etc.) on the black during the twelve months which preceded the information gathering exercise, in the Summer of 2010. This percentage is a good deal higher than that supplied by the Eurobarometer for Belgium, and it is also higher than European figures. The scale of the buying of goods and services on the black is also considerable: the average amount for the highest sum spent is €1,535, whilst the Eurobarometer only indicated €1,050 for Belgium and €1,028 for the average of the Europe of 27 (EU27).

But that is not all: in this study the supply of work on the black is also markedly higher than that indicated in the Eurobarometer. No less than 14.1% of the respondents in effect admitted that they had worked on the black, against just 6% of Belgians in the Eurobarometer and 5% of the population in the EU27.

If we multiply it by the average amount, the percentage of the population who buy or offer products or services on the black gives an average volume of fraud per person and can be expressed in comparison with the GDP. The study’s figures give 1.9% of GDP as the average amount spent on acquiring goods and services on the black, and the overall value of work carried out on the black is fixed at 0.6% of GDP. Normally these two figures should be identical, because the supply responds to the demand. But the two processes are doubtless not considered to be something to be equally admitted to! The Belgians obviously more easily admit having bought on the black than having worked on the black themselves. This latter aspect has thus certainly been underestimated.