The Belgian federal government’s inter-institutional negotiations, as a result of elections held on the 9th of June 2024, proceeded on the 8th of January, 2025. The Formator of the New Flemish Alliance (N-VA), Bart De Wever, has set these negotiations to be concluded by end of January.
The primary aim is to establish a government by the month’s end, or it will be assumed that the proposed ‘Arizona coalition formula is no longer viable. These negotiations are still being carried out with political parties such as N-VA, MR, Les Engagés, Vooruit, and CD&V; therefore, there are great possibilities of consensus as seen in different operations in regard to multiple decisions.
Belgian government talks begin again on January 8, 2025, which will be 212 days since the elections. Although Party Formation remains difficult, with continuing struggles, especially in reconciling budget issues and other sensitive social and economic questions, Formator Bart De Wever still plans to complete the formation of a coalition before January ends. Two months ago, when meeting with King Philippe, De Wever spoke about his expectations of significant achievements and asked for granting him the last 30-day extension of his mandate. The King had previously urged De Wever to expedite the process, expressing a desire for a “decisive breakthrough” as the new year commenced. While discussions have remained “mostly positive,” significant hurdles persist, particularly concerning budget agreements and contentious socio-economic issues such as labour market reforms and taxation.
Despite the activities made on these themes, no partial consensus has yet been reached. The tax is still sensitive and has been forwarded to a political–technical group to work on different amendments while preparing reports to the national party leadership.
Nonetheless, according to the sources, the tone of negotiations has remained fairly courteous, with no apparent signs of frictional exchange of debate. New PM De Wever is expected to write back to the King with an update on the progress of forming the new government by January 31. This will be the 16th time for the militant to visit the palace, given the period of elections. The current negotiations are as important for forming a functioning government as for solving the urgent problems, which include Belgium’s budget deficit and socioeconomic reforms.
The long road to coalition formation
Belgian Parties continue to struggle to form a new government to rule the nation; this has not been easy because of the many challenges that have come up due to the linguistic divides and the various parties that make the formation of the government very complicated. Belgium has been left without a federal government for an unusually long time since the June elections in which right-leaning parties made further advances, and now it seems to recall the previous political crises of the area, which could last more than 500 days. The current coalition talks involve five major parties: N-VA, MR, Les Engagés, CD&V, and Vooruit. In combination, they have 81 seats in the 150-seat Belgian Federal Parliament, which gives them a comfortable majority.
The negotiations have many changes that have been proposed and rejected by different stakeholders, revealing fundamental issues that have to be solved to ratify the treaty. Among all these topics, taxation has been one of the most problematic; disagreements arising from fiscal policies have led to the stalling of the matter and the formation of new technical groups to address it. Thirdly, at present, Belgium is receiving disciplinary punishment from the EU because of its budget deficit, which has been more than the permitted limits.
While performing these vivid manoeuvres, Bart De Wever tries to bring together different political entities; day to day, he has to find a middle ground that would satisfy all the conflicting parties. On the one hand, political bickering has peaked, and people’s demand to see the appearance of a new government has intensified. On the other hand, expectations for potential economic crises increase. Therefore, the focus is on these partners and the goal that many hope will culminate in a successful conclusion to this drawn-out negotiation process.
