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.
What?
Who processes the cheques?
Banks, that is who, physical currency is far ä, far more autonomous than cheques.
You do not need a bank account to cash a cheque in Belgium. And you don’t have to give the bank so much as a penny to do that.
Indeed that’s true, but Belgium has already eliminated that. You cannot¹ get paid a salary in Belgium in cash (as of like a decade ago). Cheques are the only way to be free from forced bank patronage.
¹ The cash ban in Belgium discriminates on career choice. Exceptionally, some trades which have traditionally been paid in cash (e.g. domestic work) are still legally allowed to have cash wages. It is literally (strangely) coded into law that traditionally cash careers are exempted. So you could say it’s possible to get cash payments if you give up your right to work in your trade of choice. You cannot have both a right to do business in your trade and a right to autonomy at the same time. You can be a software engineer without autonomy, or you can be a cash-paid janitor with your right to autonomy.
(edit) You must realise that cheques are an access to cash. A proposed EU law currently tries to force member states to maintain access to cash, but they only thought of ATMs. They did not think to specify in the proposed law that cheques give access to cash. Cheques give more independence from banks than ATMs.