Belgium has been accustomed, for years, to breaking world records in terms of post-election elections. But the situation currently experienced in the Brussels region, which has now been under political blockade for more than 600 days, has crossed all limits. In a desperate attempt to find a solution after multiple failed negotiations, seven parties have locked themselves in to negotiate this Tuesday, with the commitment not to leave until there is white smoke among the potential partners of a future cabinet for the Belgian capital. A region in which, in addition, the main institutions of the EU and NATO are based.
Representatives of the Flemish parties Anders (liberals), CD&V (Christian Democrats), Vooruit (socialists) and Groen (greens), as well as the French-speaking Walloon PS (socialists) and the centrists of Les Engagés, attended the call of the leader of the center-right Francophone Reformist Movement (MR) party, Georges-Louis Bouchez.
“We will not leave until we achieve a result. And I am counting on achieving it,” Bouchez declared upon his arrival at what he called the “final conclave”, which is held behind closed doors at the Brussels University Foundation. “More than ever, it is necessary to join forces and act decisively to give Brussels a strong, ambitious and effective form of governance,” he had stated when calling the meeting at the beginning of the week.
However, and as the newspaper pointed out Brussels Timeseven if the long-awaited agreement is achieved, it is not guaranteed that the Belgian capital will be able to quickly count on a Government: it will only mean that there is an agreement between the seven parties that together have a sufficient majority to govern, to develop a coalition agreement in the near future that will finally allow for the appointment of a Cabinet.
Even so, after more than a year and a half of failed negotiations—those in parallel with the European and general Belgian ones—this Tuesday there was finally some optimism regarding the possibility that this umpteenth initiative would be the one to win. On the one hand, because the assembled formations are the majority on both the Flemish and Walloon sides. And, above all, because everyone seems willing not to give up until the long-awaited agreement is reached, since they have accepted the invitation to this conclave, which implies that it does not end until there is a solution.
The institution where they have been locked up, recalls the Belgian press, has 14 rooms. Negotiations are expected to last several days.
The meeting in the extremes It is known when the Belgian federal government, led by the Flemish nationalist Bart de Wever, has just turned one year old. It also took more than seven months to reach an agreement to form that Cabinet, which was finally forged through a complicated coalition of five parties.
There were 236 days of negotiations, a figure that would make more than one European capital nervous and even outside the borders of the EU, which are very used to having governments in office due to lack of agreement. The world record was broken by the country in 2011, when it took 541 days to form a Government. De Wever’s predecessor, Alexander De Croo, was very close again, and it took him 493 days to close a team.
With more than 600 days, the Brussels region has now marked a new milestone that no one is proud of: on January 30, the day on which that mark was broken, several civil associations called for a protest against the unsustainable situation in the region. This, they recalled, is mired in economic problems – the public deficit exceeds one billion euros – and security, with constant drug traffickers.
