Expensive Belgian royal holidays

This video says about itself:

Hidden expenses make UK monarchy world’s most expensive governement institution

27 June 2014

According to the latest annual report almost 36 million pounds was spent last year to support the royal family. But there are some hidden price tags most of the public are completely unaware of, as Marina Kosareva reports.

Translated from NOS TV in the Netherlands:

Criticism of King Philip’s holiday flight

Today, 15:22

A Belgian trade union has criticized the decision of King Philip to use a defense department aircraft for a holiday. The royal family flew yesterday with a defense-owned private jet to Indonesia.

The king and his family will stay for ten days in the country. During that time, also the aircraft and the crew need to stay there. …

Austerity

Philip had been under fire before because he had twice used a military aircraft to visit the FootBall World Cup in Brazil. That cost 500,000 euros altogether.

The government then promised that there would be cuts in this kind of VIP transports. For this holiday flight that was not possible according to defense minister Vandeput because “all flights for this year had already been confirmed.” Moreover, it is not possible to allow the king to travel with a scheduled plane for security reasons.

The Bahraini royal family, contrary to their Belgian colleagues, do travel on, eg, British Airways scheduled flights. That may cause problems like a Bahraini Royal Highness being drunk and disorderly on a plane. But at least, that does not cause extra costs for Bahraini taxpayers.

The union is not satisfied with this explanation and calls on the king to pay the transportation costs out of his own pocket. “The king might show at least some austerity.”