Belgium's King Albert agreed today to government plans to peg his 2009 pay rise to the same inflation index as ordinary Belgians whose salary increases do not reflect higher oil prices and who are feeling the pinch.

Belgium has a system of automatic pay increases which links wages and social benefits to the "health index" -- a measure of inflation excluding prices of energy, alcohol and tobacco.

But the incomes of King Albert and other royals is linked to overall inflation, which peaked at 5.9 percent in July. The king was set for a salary hike of about 6 percent in 2009, a spokesman for finance Minister Didier Reynders said.

Politicians demanded the system be changed, and right-wing opposition party Lijst Dedecker told newspaper Het Laatste Nieuws that the pay rise "a slap in the face of every Belgian".

Belgium's king and the country's famed varieties of beer are often cited as the few unifying factors in a nation bitterly divided along linguistic lines between Dutch-speaking Flanders and French-speaking Wallonia.