The parties involved in the present drive to form a new Belgian government, the Flemish nationalists, Christian democrats and socialists and the Francophone liberals and centrists, have been dubbed the 'Arizona parties' as their party colours all feature on the flag of this American state, but is there a parliamentary alternative to an ‘Arizona’ government?
Flemish socialist leader Rousseau (Vooruit) hinted at it in an interview in daily Het Nieuwsblad last weekend: ‘A government can easily be formed without us’ he said.
One such alternative is a centre-right government, with Flemish liberal Open VLD replacing Flemish socialist Vooruit. It has a very narrow majority of 76 out of 150 seats in the lower house of the federal parliament. ‘One seat to play with,’ says political editor Bart Verhulst. ‘Moreover, that one seat belongs to Jean-Marie Dedecker, an independent in the N-VA group, a man who steers his own course.’ Stable such a coalition is not.
In addition, that government would have no majority on the Dutch-speaking side. N-VA criticised the De Croo government and earlier the Di Rupo government exactly on this point, for not representing a majority of Dutch-speaking seats in the federal parliament. ‘N-VA is never going to repeat that, because that is precisely a point they have been condemning for years,’ colleague Verhulst adds.
The Open VLD liberals have also already said they prefer to be in opposition. In an interview with daily Le Soir this weekend, Open VLD leader Eva De Bleeker did make a minute opening. On the one hand, Ms De Bleeker said she does not want to help out a federal government just like that. On the other hand, it sounded like this was not completely impossible. Today, pMs De Bleeker has not yet commented.
The classical tripartite option
Another track could be a ‘classical’ tripartite government with the three main traditional strands of Belgian politics, with the French-speaking and Dutch-speaking socialists, liberals and Christian democrats. ‘That coalition has a slightly more comfortable majority of 81 seats, but it includes 2 parties that lost the elections: Francophone socialist PS and Flemish liberal Open VLD,’ says Verhulst.
‘Both of these have already said they want to serve in opposition. Moreover, in such a coalition you have the same tension between right and left, socialists and liberals. That tension becomes even greater, because Francophone PS is, after all, more left-wing than Flemish Vooruit.’
Time is running out
Our conclusion: the alternatives to the current team are ‘even more difficult’. The extra time given to Mr De Wever may bring good counsel, but the formateur also knows that time is running out.
The EU gave Belgium until 31 December to submit a multi-year budget. If the negotiating parties want their fiscal reforms to take effect from 2025, measures have to be voted in the federal parliament first.