Belgium - Elections 2019
Prime Minister Charles Michel was left leading a minority administration 09 December 2018 after the Flemish nationalist party quit the ruling coalition over his support of a UN migration pact. The New Flemish Alliance (N-VA), the largest of the coalition’s four parties, had earlier threatened to leave if Michel backed the accord, which has become a cause celebre for European anti-immigration parties. Belgium’s King Philippe accepted the resignations of the N-VA’s ministers after meeting with Michel at the royal palace. The move left Michel's liberal Reformist Movement (MR) along with his Flemish liberal Open VLD and Christian Democrats (CD&V) coalition partners with only 52 of 150 seats in parliament. The departure of the Flemish party meant Michel would lack a parliamentary majority for five months ahead of legislative elections scheduled for late May 2019.
Embattled Belgian Prime Minister Charles Michel announced on 18 December 2018 that he would step down as leader of his country's government. The move came after he lost a vote of confidence in Belgium's parliament. The vote was brought forth by the French-speaking Socialist Party and the Green Party. Michel immediately notified King Philippe of his decision to step down. The resignation comes two days after demonstrations against the pact in central Brussels descended into scuffles, with police forced to use tear gas and water cannon to restore order. Thousands of people in the Belgian capital of Brussels recently followed the call of right-wing groups and demonstrated against the UN migration pact. According to police, about 5,500 people took part in the "march against Marrakech". After a debate in parliament where opposition parties refused to lend their support to allow his government to keep working until legislative elections in May 2019, Michel announced he would quit.
The Prime Minister had the political courage to sacrifice his alliance with the N-VA to support the Migration Pact. "The socialist and ecologist opposition wanted a trophy and got it, " said MR group leader David Clarinval. "There was a refusal of the outstretched hand when the Prime Minister was very far in concrete proposals " of cooperation with the parliament, including the reduction of VAT on electricity, purchasing power, the interprofessional agreement, added Mr. Clarinval. " It was understood during the break that the opposition wanted the head of the Prime Minister, it was confirmed with the announcement of the tabling of a motion of non confidence".
The Federation of Enterprises of Belgium (FEB) deeply regrets the situation of political uncertainty brought about by the resignation of the Michel government. " Entrepreneurs and investors have a horror of this, " said FEB boss Pieter Timmermans. "There were a lot of things that were almost tied up and they were waiting for approval in plenary, so how do you know what's going to happen now?" It's like reading in the coffee grounds," said Timmermans. "The current political situation is one of uncertainty, which is still hated by entrepreneurs and investors, which is unfortunate: the lack of treatment of files such as the inter-professional agreement represents a missed opportunity", according to the boss of the FEB.
The decision whether or not to hold early elections depends on the government, which has not shown the intention so far to go in this direction. Several parties have an interest in early elections. Or, in any case, should not be afraid, it is in the order Ecolo, Groen, the PTB. It is less obvious, the VLD was in the process of rebuilding. Finally, the N-VA. It remained down compared to its score of 2014 but remained ultra-dominant and politically almost inevitable.
N-VA had been part of Prime Minister Charles Michel's center-right coalition until December 2018, when it pulled out of government in protest of Michel's decision to sign Belgium onto the UN Global Migration Compact in an attempt to woo far-right voters. To avoid snap elections, King Philippe appointed a caretaker government with Michel at the helm that also includes the Christian Democratic CD&V and the centrist Open VLD.
Belgium was looking at a tough political as results of the country's 26 May 2019 national elections delivered fragmented results divided on language lines, with little political consensus. This prompted fears that Belgium could once again face a lengthy period without a government, as it did when 2010 elections led to a record-breaking 541 days without a government. Voting is mandatory in Belgium, and some 8 million voters went to the polls in the Flemish-speaking northern region of Flanders, the French-speaking southern area of Wallonia, and the capital Brussels, to elect their national and regional representatives at the same time as the country voted in EU elections.
The far-right Vlaams Belang party made major gains, jumping over 12 points to finish with 18.5% of the vote. However, most of Belgium's other parties have long maintained that they would not form a governing coalition with the right-wing populists. Despite this success, the more moderate Flemish nationalist party the N-VA looked likely to remain the largest party in parliament. However, it conceded defeat as it tumbled from 20.26% in the last election to just over 16% this time. N-VA tentatively suggested that it would be open to coalition talk with Vlaams Belang. Meanwhile, Prime Minister Michel's Francophone MR party fell to 7.5%, a loss of around 2 points, while Wallonia's Socialist party garnered 9.4% of the vote.
King Philippe ousted a third official charged with forming a new government. The king accepted the resignation of the Flemmish Christian Democrat Koen Geens and resumed consultations for the role on 17 February 2020. King Philippe had tasked Geens with taking necessary actions to form a government exactly two weeks earlier on January 31, the same day that he dismissed two negotiators who had unsuccessfully sought a governable majority in the 12-party parliament. Belgium's acting government, led by liberal Prime Minister Sophie Wilmes, is carried by three parties that have only 38 of parliament's 150 seats.
By September 2020 the country was still being run by a caretaker government because its squabbling parties have not managed to agree on a governing coalition. This was despite marathon negotiating sessions and a continuous stream of brave knightly politicians tasked by King Philippe to slay the dragon of political polarisation but who get their fingers burned instead. Coalition negotiations have moved beyond the more common colour-coding conventions (purple-green, rainbow, etc.) to be dubbed the "Vivaldi coalition" in a nod to the Italian composer's violin concerti Four Seasons.
Like Antonio Vivaldi, Flemish liberal Egbert Lachaert (who was the 12th politician to lead the consultations to form a coalition since the elections in May 2019), had the unenviable task of composing an agreement that, while not music to the ears of any party, can at least get socialists, liberals, greens and Christian democrats on both sides of the country's widening language divide singing from the same sheet of music. Caretaker premier Sophie Wilmes's emergency mandate came to an end in mid-September 2020. The acting prime minister had indicated that she was unlikely to seek a renewed mandate, which would involve a vote of confidence which she stood a strong chance of losing.
One factor was the attempt to keep the far-right out of government. However, with the far-right Vlaams Belang party performing strongly at the ballot box in 2019, maintaining this so-called cordon sanitaire (ie, the exclusion of the extremist party from government) is proving more difficult than ever. The Nieuw-Vlaamse Alliantie (N-VA), which is one of the two largest right-wing parties in Belgium and part of the negotiations, has been openly questioning the cordon sanitaire. Another major issue is the growing political gulf separating Belgium's two main regions. Francophone Wallonia tended to vote for more leftist and progressive parties, while Dutch-speaking Flanders generally preferred more conservative and right-wing parties.
The Parti Socialiste (PS) is social democratic, supports the European Union and believes in climate action, while the N-VA is free-market neo-liberal, Eurosceptical and downplays climate change. They also disagree fundamentally about the future of Belgium, with the PS believing in a united Belgium and the N-VA seeking to decentralise the country out of existence. This growing polarisation has placed almost unbearable strain on the model of consensual politics, known colloquially as the "Belgian compromise", that has so effectively defused tension and stopped conflicts from spinning out of control since the country's founding in 1830.
Alexander De Croo, incumbent finance minister and member of the Flemish liberal party Open Vld, is Belgium’s new prime minister. De Croo would lead the country’s 7-party Vivaldi coalition of Flemish and Francophone socialists, liberals and greens (spa and PS; MR and Open Vld; Ecolo and Groen) and Flemish Christian democrats (CD&V). The announcement came 01 ctober 2020, just hours after the parties clinched a deal concluding the second lengthiest government negotiations in Belgian history. De Croo will spearhead the Vivaldi coalition in steering the country through the aftershocks of the pandemic, and is set to face fierce pushback from the Flemish opposition parties, sidelined from the incoming administration despite making big gains in the election. The choice of De Croo followed calls for the country’s new prime minister to be a Dutch-speaker, since the last PM to lead a full-fledged government, Charles Michel, was Francophone.
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