Trajtenberg Committee

The Trajtenberg Committee (Hebrew: ועדת טרכטנברג) is a commission appointed by the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on August 8, 2011 in order to examine and propose solutions to Israel's socioeconomic problems. The committee was established following the 2011 Israeli housing protests. The committee is headed by professor Manuel Trajtenberg, who is the chairman of the Higher Education Planning and Budget Committee.

On August 8, 2011 Prime Minister Netanyahu appointed a special committee headed by Professor Trajtenberg.

The committee is to operate for a month, during which it will hold discussions with representatives of the protesters, with civil society organizations, and with various sectors of the public. Afterwards, in mid-September, the committee will make its recommendations to the government's socio-economic cabinet, headed by Finance Minister Yuval Steinitz and composed of 15 ministers. After that, the government will discuss the committee's conclusions.

The committee includes 14 permanent members, 9 of whom are government or public officials and five of whom are from the academia and the private sector.

Two ministers, Michael Eitan and Limor Livnat, were appointed as observers in the committee.

The committee was ordered to investigate:

The Committee's recommendations were published in September 2011. The recommendations were perceived to be good for the "hard-working middle classes". They included a slower increase for the defence budget. They were first discussed by the Israeli Cabinet a few days later.

Netanyahu initially promised to push the Committee's recommendations through the cabinet in one piece, but there were differences inside the governing coalition and a different approach of gradual implementation was eventually adopted.

In December 2011 the Knesset approved a series of amendments to Israel's tax law. These included an increase in the capital gains tax rate from 20% to 25%.

As part of measures to solve the country's housing shortage, the Trajtenberg recommendations included a plan to sell land at a discount to build 5,000 units of affordable housing. The homes would be sold through the existing Mehir Lemishtaken program to people deemed eligible for affordable housing at a discount to market prices. The Trajtenberg committee had recommended mandating that in the case of families, both parents be working. The Shas party objected to this, since it would make Haredi families less likely to qualify. Housing minister Ariel Atias (Shas) proposed criteria that would favour Haredi applicants; this was opposed by Prof. Trajtenberg himself, who said that Atias' criteria had nothing to do with social justice. A housing plan approved by the cabinet in March 2012 included sanctions against developers that delay construction, higher municipal taxes on unoccupied homes and measures to increase the housing supply in Arab communities.

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Wikipedia