Belgium plunges into unprecedented political crisis

After 152 days without a government, the Belgian political and constitutional crisis has reached unprecedented proportions as the debate over splitting up the Brussels Halle Vilvoorde electoral region is tearing the country’s two linguistic communities apart.

Without a new government since the elections on 10 June, Belgium is plunging deeper into political crisis. Flemish members of parliament voted, on 7 November, in favour of a law that critics say will leave some 120,000 French speakers isolated by preventing them to vote for francophone parties in the Flemish periphery of Brussels.

The vote prompted French-speaking delegates to leave coalition negotiations led by Yves Leterme a Flemish Christian Democrat who won the June elections. According to Didier Reynders, the leader of the French-speaking Liberal Reform Movement, the ‘Belgian pact’ – which calls for different communities and minorities in this federal state of three regions to be respected – has been broken.

Regardless of what seems like a second defeat for the prime minister-designate Yves Leterme (see EURACTIV 24/08/2007), Belgium’s King Albert II asked the leader of the Flemish Christian Democrat party on 8 November to continue his mandate and strive to form a government coalition, on the basis of the so-called Blue Orange coalition (Christian Democrat and Liberal). 

King Albert II, the symbol of unity between the two communities, is also considering the possibility of setting up a ‘committee of wise men’ to re-establish a dialogue between the two linguistic communities.

The main problem in the talks – involving the Christian Democrats and Liberals from Flanders and Wallonia – is Yves Leterme’s party’s demand for more regional powers in areas such as justice and transport, as well as in fields such as employment and social security, a move which the francophone parties said would substantially empty the federal state of its substance.

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