The Brussels regional MP Fouad Ahidar (Team Fouad Ahidar) is to contact 5 of the 7 other Dutch-speaking parties that have seats in the regional parliament to see if he can get the coalition talks among the capital’s Dutch-speaking parties back on track.
In Brussels a majority needs to be found among each of the two language groups before a coalition government can be formed. While the Francophone parties have already formed a majority (liberals, centrists, socialists on their side, little if any progress has been made on the Dutch-speaking side of the language divide.
On Friday the outgoing Flemish green regional minister Elke Van den Brandt said that she was throwing in the towel. The Flemish greens, who are the largest Dutch-speaking party in the Brussels Regional Parliament with 4 seats, are unhappy that the Francophone majority parties (with the support of the Flemish liberals) intend to put forward a motion in the regional parliament this week that will postpone the next phase of the roll out of the Low Emissions’ Zone in Brussels by another 2 years.
Furthermore, the leader of the Francophone liberals’ Georges-Louis Bouchez wrote on the social media platform X that he wants to scrap the Good Move mobility plan that was introduced by Ms Van den Brandt.
With 3 seats Mr Ahidar’s Team Fouad Ahidar is the second largest party in the Dutch language group in the Brussels Parliament. Now the former Flemish socialist says that he wants to see if he can get the coalition talks back on track.
Mr Ahidar says that he sees his mission as one of a mediator. He adds that as far as he is concerned the greens can stay at the negotiating table. Fouad Ahidar will contact the Flemish nationalists (N-VA), his former party (Vooruit), the Flemish liberals (Open VLD), the Flemish greens (Groen) and the Flemish Christian democrats (CD&V). The far-left PVDA and the far-right Vlaams Belang will not be invited for talks.