Corona slowdown

 

 

 Belgian government negotiations, today in their 473th day, have slowed down this week, due to a positive corona-test last Tuesday of Egbert Lachaert, the president of the Flemish liberals and one of the two ‘pre-formateurs’. Other negotiators, and even king Philip, then also took the corona-test, but nobody had a positive result. Nevertheless, all have to stay at home to have a second test confirming the first one.

 

 Meanwhile the negotiations have to take place online. As it is usual that the last round to reach an agreement is also a physical competition, whereby the negotiators play on each other’s exhaustion and the compromise is often reached after dawn, the deadline for a breakthrough was postponed.

 

 In principle the two ‘pre-formateurs’ sent out on 4 September by king Philip, Lachaert and his socialist colleague Conner Rousseau, should have reported to the king on Friday the 11th. After that a ‘formateur’ – most likely the designated prime minister of the new coalition – should have been sent out to do the real negotiations on political compromises. In reality, there has been no progress on the thorny issue of who will lead the coalition.

 

 Rousseau and Lachaert reported via telephone to the King on Friday. Their mission has now been prolonged with one week. In the official statement the 1st of October was indicated as the date where the new government should come into life. The negotiators also stated that, ‘it is important that the present federal minority government will continue to operate with full competences until that date’.

 

 The present government of Sophie Wilmès, which was a minority government (with only 38 of the 150 seats in the present parliament) since December 2018, indeed obtained the support of a parliamentary majority last 17 March, in order to combat the corona-crisis. Wilmès then announced that she would try to obtain the confidence again six months later, on 17 September.

 

 That date has now been postponed to 1 October. Nevertheless, as the extreme right opposition (Vlaams Belang) has laid down a motion of no-confidence, a vote will still take place next Thursday.