Belgium plans to do away with paper cheques. Apparently no one is fighting this. The eagerness to do away with paper cheques can only be attributed to addiction to convenience without regard to the consequences.
Once paper cheques are gone, there will be no way to survive without banks. Even if you walk away from your job and go on social aid, the social aid has no way to reach you without a bank account. Paper cheques are the sole means having personal autonomy from banks.
Some pensioners still receive their pension payment as a paper cheque, which they can cash without having a bank account. Belgium is taking this away.
Where are you? If you can get paid in cash where you are, then you don’t need paper cheques to have autonomy. Belgium has already banned cash payments of wages (like a decade ago), so paper cheques are the only way to have autonomy and be free from forced banking in Belgium.
Switzerland, previous Germany.
I’m pretty sure you need a bank account to get any salary in most of Europe already.
Not if cheques are possible. France likely still has paper cheques, so people there have autonomy. They can get a salary without a bank account.
If I understand you correctly, in Switzerland and Germany you have already lost your human right to autonomy. You must lick the boots of a bank. Correct me if I’m wrong.
Same, Belgian, never seen a cheque except in ancient american tv
Not sure why you think this is relevent. There are perhaps many human rights that you are not exercising. E.g. if you are not an activist, you are probably not making much use of your free speech rights. If you never leave Belgium, you are not making use of your freedom of movement rights. If you do not marry, you are not exercising your right to marry.
Are you implying that if you don’t personally need a right, then the right is not worth having? There are plenty of activists using their freedom of speech rights to advocate for better policy, which affects you. If some people are unbanked and fight to maintain that option, then you benefit from banks having to offer a level of service that at least competes with the unbanked option.
You can easily see a cheque if you tell your mutuelle to erase your IBAN from their records. The next time you request reimbursement for a medical service, they will see there is no IBAN and they will automatically mail you a cheque.
Once they eliminate cheques, then of course that won’t be an option. You can possibly exercise your GDPR art.17 right to erase your IBAN from the mutuelle’s files, but from there I suppose people in that situation will just not get their money because they are not going to install a safe or kiosk for cash reimbursement.
(edit) Even though you have a bank account, it’s in your interest to get paid by paper cheque whenever possible. It gives you some extra control and escape from nannying. Some banks already have cash withdrawal limits of like €400. If your medical reimbursements, paycheques, or whatever go straight to your bank account, you are then subject to the nannying and interrogation when making a cash withdrawal. With a paper cheque, you have control. You can still deposit it into your account at no cost if you want. Or you can cash it without being interrogated about why you need the cash. If your bank has a cash withdrawal limit, cashed cheques do not count toward that limit.