Debate: What is wealth for?

Few questions are as politically charged as what wealth is ultimately for.

Across Europe, inequality is rising, public finances are under strain, and economic growth remains fragile. Debates about wealth therefore tend to focus on redistribution: who should pay more, how much, and how. Yet this often sidelines a prior question: how wealth is created, and what that implies for taxation, incentives, and long-term prosperity.

This evening at TheMerode is deliberately framed as a debate, not a search for consensus.

Bruno Fierens brings an unusual perspective. A Belgian multimillionaire whose wealth is largely inherited from a prominent business family, he has publicly questioned the legitimacy of extreme wealth accumulation and the limits of voluntary philanthropy, raising broader questions about social cohesion, democratic trust, and public policy.

Opposite him, Ivan Van de Cloot, chief economist of the Merito think tank, approaches the issue through the lens of growth, incentives, and institutional sustainability. He has long stressed the importance of wealth creation, capital formation, and entrepreneurship, particularly in a European context shaped by ageing populations, high public debt, and modest productivity growth.

Their exchange will confront difficult but unavoidable questions about why inequality remains such a contested political priority, how societies should distinguish between fighting poverty and addressing inequality, when taxation corrects imbalances and when it risks weakening value creation, and how much room should be left to voluntary action and civil society versus state-imposed measures.

The aim of the debate is to examine how wealth is created, how it circulates, and what a society can reasonably expect from it, and from those who hold it.