One year before the parliamentary elections in Belgium, the campaign is already launched and the future of the coalition of seven parties led by the liberal Alexander De Croo is already the subject of all the speculation, in a country reputedly ungovernable.
The configuration of a Dutch-speaking north well anchored on the right and a French-speaking south in the heart more and more on the left already augurs new endless discussions to form a government.
As if to signal the start of the race which will end with the vote on June 9, 2024, a poll last weekend offered a fresh snapshot of the balance of power.
Significantly, this “great barometer” of opinion, carried out on a sample of 2,600 voters, led the formation of Prime Minister De Croo to convene a crisis meeting.
This party, the Open VLD (Flemish liberals), sees its number of seats in deputies melting – from twelve to six – with 8.3% of the voting intentions in Flanders, the most populated region of the country. where the conservatives of the neo-Flemish Alliance (N-VA) and the extreme right (the anti-immigration party Vlaams Belang) each weigh around 22%.
In general, the so-called government parties are weakening, with the exception of the French-speaking Socialist Party, unbeatable champion in Wallonia. And its Flemish counterpart Vooruit, third in its region at nearly 17%.
“I wouldn’t want to be in Alexander De Croo’s shoes,” Nathalie Brack, professor of political science at the Free University of Brussels, told AFP.
Since taking office in October 2020, at the head of a coalition also bringing together Flemish Christian Democrats, socialists and ecologists, the Flemish liberal has faced a succession of crises, from the pandemic to the war in Ukraine and its consequences on the energy prices and purchasing power.
And in fact, the first to benefit from this context are the protest parties, notes Ms. Brack: the Vlaams Belang (VB) in the north and the communists of the Labor Party of Belgium (PTB) credited with 19% in the south, “where there is no radical right party”.
“Even if the economic indicators do not confirm it, there is this idea in Belgium that people are getting poorer and that politicians are not doing anything about it. These two parties are playing on it”, underlines the expert.
“De Croo, he wants to play the card of the responsible leader who has held on, but that does not appeal”.
The same poll shows that 76% of Belgians do not want to see the current coalition renewed even if the electoral results allow it.
Another option would be to build a team around the PS and the N-VA, the current leading opposition party. A marriage judged against nature politically, already tried in the past, without success.
In 2010-2011, Belgium had gone 541 days without an incumbent government. An absolute record from which the country was not so far away when the De Croo government finally came into being (493 days after the May 2019 elections).
For political scientists, associating PS and N-VA, the two heavyweights of the south and the north, would open the way to long and complex institutional debates, without necessarily compromising.
The powerful Flemish party pleads for a regionalization of competences. But other formations deem above all urgent to reduce the levels of decision-making and the cost for the public finances of an “over-administered” Belgium.
“A large part of society became aware, during the Covid, of the complexity of our institutions and would like simplifications”, argued in the daily Le Soir Caroline Sägesser, of the Center for Socio-Political Research and Information ( crisp).
If Alexander De Croo is not able to be reappointed as he wishes in a year, the leader of the French-speaking PS Paul Magnette, co-negotiator of the government agreement in 2020, is already a candidate to succeed him.
In the meantime, the Prime Minister wants to prove that he can still carry out major reforms, which the N-VA accuses him of being incapable of. He invited his majority partners for a whole weekend of work, Saturday and Sunday, on tax reform.
16/06/2023 06:40:49 – Bruxelles (AFP) – © 2023 AFP