Day 262, on a long and winding road

 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.