On Thursday King Filip accepted the resignation of the Flemish nationalist leader Bart De Wever as federal government “Formateur”. A “Formateur” is the person charged with forming a new coalition government. After his attempts to find agreement among the 5 parties that are currently involved in the federal coalition talks failed, Mr De Wever felt he had no choice other than to offer his resignation to the King when Belgium’s Head of State received him at the Royal Palace on Thursday evening.
This means that the so-called “Arizona coalition” with the Flemish nationalists, Francophone liberals, Flemish socialists and Francophone and Flemish Christian democrats is not yet dead in the water.
This is despite Mr De Wever having failed in his efforts to get all 5 parties to reach agreement on measures contained in a socio-economic policy document that he had redrafted several times in order to address the concerns of one or more of the parties that were around the table.
What now?
The issue at play here is that the Francophone liberals vehemently oppose proposals for a capital gains tax on profits made from capital transactions. These proposals are contained in the policy document. Meanwhile, the Flemish socialist are very much in favour of the measure.
The estimated annual revenues for the Belgian state from the tax would be between 70 and 100 million euro. To put this into perspective the Federal Government has an annual a budget of around 28 billion euro.
With the talks now at an impasse, the question is being asked as to whether Belgium will meet the deadline of 20 September before which it has to submit a budget to the European Commission. Furthermore, with the local elections now just 7 weeks away will the parties not now be more focused on campaigning that on looking for compromises that will lead to the formation of a new government?
What the papers say?
The headlines in Friday morning’s newspapers couldn’t be clearer
“It didn't work out”, headlines the Antwerp daily Gazet Van Antwerpen.
Het Nieuwsblad writes “Back to square one”.
De Morgen headlines “Government formation stuck”.
The financial daily ‘De Tijd’ writes “The hope of a new government before the local elections has evaporated”.
Meanwhile, ‘Het Laatste Nieuws’ believes that the King is buying time with his round of consultative before he sends a new “Formateur” into the ring.
‘De Standaard ‘wonders how can the Francophone liberals and the the Flemish socialists onto the same page.