Two hundred sixty-four days after the general
elections (held on 26 May 2019) and 422 days after its last fully functioning government resigned,
negotiations for a new government in Belgium seem to have ended in total
impasse. New elections may now be the most likely outcome.
Since the elections of 10 June 2007 it has
become increasingly complicated to form a federal Belgian government. Between
2007 and 2010, four governments succeeded each other, before the last one broke
down in April 2010. Then followed elections and 540 days of negotiations before
Elio di Rupo was able to lead a center-left government that pushed through some
remarkable reforms between December 2011 and May 2014. After the elections in
that month, Charles Michel led a government between October 2014 and December
2018, center-right and with a full majority in Parliament, but with an unusual
weak support in French-speaking Belgium, as only Michel’s liberal party
represented the electors of that part of the country. The present caretaking
government of Sophie Wilmes – who replaced Michel on 1 December last year – is
a remnant of that, as many leading ministers (Michel, Commissioner Didier Reynders,
MEP Kris Peeters) have in the meantime found new challenges.
The instability is partly the consequence of a
process that you see everywhere in Europe: the fragmentation of the political
landscape and the rise of populist parties. Up to 1994 Christian democrats and
socialists had always a majority when they accepted to govern with each other.
Since 2019 they, even combined with the third traditional parties (as each
tendency has a Flemish and a French-speaking party), the liberals, obtain no
majority anymore. Flanders already saw its extreme right Vlaams Belang party
rise to 24 % of the votes in 2004, after which it declined. Since 2010 its role
had been taken over by a more moderate conservative and Flemish-nationalist
party, the N-VA of Bart De Wever, that obtained about 30 % of the votes in that
region in the elections between 2010 and 2014. Due to its participation in the
government of Michel it has declined to 25 % on 26 May 2019. In French-speaking
Belgium there has been a breakthrough of the extreme left PTB, first in 2014,
then, after a series of political scandals in Wallonia and Brussels in 2016-17,
quite strongly in the local elections of 2018 and the general elections of
2019. The banking and economic crisis of the beginning of last decade have of
course contributed to this, although Belgium was in the part of Europe where it
was less painful than elsewhere on the continent. A growing disgust with their
own government(s) seems also to play a role, as traditional parties, that are
still in the driving seat, become afraid to take risks, recruits less and less
top talents, are constantly focused on their own survival instead of new
ambitions. Politics in general has become extremely short term, not the least
because of the pressure of social media.
All this has generated the electoral result of
26 May. Both the extreme left and the extreme right gained about 10 % of the
votes, although the latter only in Flanders, the former mainly in Wallonia and
Brussels. In the federal chamber the group of the Vlaams Belang is now the
third largest one, with 18 seats, after NVA (24) and Parti Socialiste (18). The
two Christian democratic parties, the heirs of the party that dominated most of
Belgium’s 190 years of political history, have now combined (17) less seats
than the Greens (21) or even the Flemish extreme right. They have even been
dwarfed by their old liberal rivals (together still 26 seats, but also rapidly
declining). The Flemish socialists, for decades the undisputed second party in
that region, have now become the sixth in the ranking.
But the biggest shock that came out of the
election is the enormous difference between Flanders and the French-speaking
regions, which is also reflected in the composition of the group of 21 Belgian
MEPs that were elected on the same day. Flanders has gone extremely to the
right, with in the EP half of the Flemish mandates for NVA and Vlaams Belang,
which both are officially adepts of Flemish independence. In French-speaking
Belgium the eight MEPs have 5 on the left (PTB, PS, Ecolo), and both liberals
and the one Christian democrats would be considered left-wing if they were
members of the same party in Flanders (as they are in their European group).
The paradox behind this is that since the
(already largely symbolic and not really concrete) issue of the electoral
district of Brussel-Halle-Vilvoorde was solved in 2013, there have been no
tensions or incidents about language or identity anymore. One could even argue that
the old communal problems of Belgium have largely been solved by the process of
institutional devolution that will be fifty years old this year. But the old
antagonisms and the regional identities that have been created through it, are
now blown into full fire again by a complete different electoral choice on a
regional level. And as the regional governments that have been created over the
last fifty years are heavily centralized – different to what is tradition in
Switzerland, that other multilingual country – this creates regional governments with large
powers but opposing policies inside the same country. One can argue in length
that there are large pockets in Flanders where the left is still strong and
vice versa in Wallonia, but in the end Bart De Wever’s ten year old paradigm of
‘two different democracies inside one country’ is taking shape. And there are
other disturbing consequences: neither the new Commission in December, nor the
free-trade agreement with Vietnam last week found a majority of support among
MEPs of Belgium, once the most pro-European country after Italy.
In general one can say that in the last 262
days two scenario’s were tested most: one to form a left-wing dominated
government with socialists, greens and eventually the liberals and/or the
Christian democrats; another one where the two biggest parties (also the
biggest one in each part of the country), NVA and PS, would compromise on either a minimal program or a huge reformist one to stabilize the country. The
latter was tested the last two weeks and has been shot down by PS-president
Paul Magnette Friday. Magnette may be less patient than his predecessor Elio di
Rupo and just at the beginning of his mandate as party-president evidently not
prone or strong enough to go into experiments. But above all he stood under
extreme pressure, as both his rivals on the left, Ecolo and PTB, blatantly
refused any coalition with the NVA. NVA-president Bart De Wever may have given
signs that he was eager to take up more responsibilities than in the past. His
analysis seems to have been that it would be difficult to recuperate his
disenchanted voters that have already crossed to Vlaams Belang, and that
possible gains may have to be found more easily in the center. But he is probably more shaken than it appears by the
electoral defeat and by rivals in his party that want the NVA get closer to
Vlaams Belang. Vlaams Belang is the only party that eagerly wants new elections
as the (notoriously unreliable) polls make them the largest party of the
country.
King Philip (left on the photo) will probably take his time for consultations the
next days as his latest choice for negotiations, acting minister of Justice
Koen Geens (right on the picture, already
considered to be quite a personal choice from the palace), handed in his
resignation on Friday evening. But new elections are seen as the most
probable outcome of the crisis, although they need to be decided by a majority
in the present Parliament.
Above all this hangs the shadow of Flemish independence,
as can be detected in Le Soir this
morning. In the Flemish regional Parliament NVA and Vlaams Belang fell five
seats short of a majority on 26 May. For six weeks in the summer they held (not
really genuine) negotiations for a coalition in the Flemish government. The
biggest risk is that Flemish independence is in Flanders increasingly felt to
be an easy way out of the continuing Belgian troubles, as the northern region
is large enough (6,6 million people), and economically strong enough (surely
stronger than Wallonia and Brussels), even if it would lose its foothold inside
Brussels. Flanders is also sentimentally less attached to Belgium, as it had in
the past to overcome its linguistic discrimination against the resistance of
part of the Belgian authorities, including the monarchy. French-speaking
Belgium on the other hand, regardless of the inner differences (between
Brussels and Wallonia to name but one), is far more attached to its Belgian
identity. In other words: in case of a majority in Flanders opting for
independence, things could rapidly become as emotional as in Spain, with all
the consequences of political standstill and inflamed opinions. Besides there
is in Belgium a global government debt of 100 % gdp (rising again) to manage.
The illusion of a seemingly easy choice for Flanders could in practice rapidly
turn into something far more complicated and unpredictable.
We are not at that point yet. The message for
the moment is: it might be worth to keep a somewhat sharper eye on events in
Belgium than usual. Even if these are only adding another element to the
depressing landscape of ever growing and seemingly unstoppable instability all
over Western Europe.
