BRUSSELS (Reuters) – Belgium finally secured a government yesterday after record-long talks to form a coalition that promises the most profound state reform in decades and a commitment to restore the country’s finances.
The new six-party coalition has a mammoth 180-page deal to enact having already lost a year and a half of a four-year term.
The government must satisfy demands of the Dutch-speaking Flemish majority for devolution of further powers to Belgium’s regions, and may have to redraw a budget that economists say is based on too optimistic a growth forecast.
That will be no easy matter. Budget talks themselves dragged on for six weeks and only concluded at the end of an 18-hour session after Standard & Poor’s had cut Belgium’s credit rating to AA from AA+.
The new government will be headed by French-speaking Socialist leader Elio Di Rupo. It retained many of the ministers from the caretaker government of acting prime minister Yves Leterme, albeit in different roles.
Flemish Christian Democrat Steven Vanackere becomes finance minister and francophone Liberal Didier Reynders foreign minister, a straight job switch. The cabinet will be sworn in this afternoon, the palace said.
Di Rupo will be the first native French-speaking prime minister of Belgium since 1979 and the first from the region of Wallonia since 1974, as well as the first son of immigrants and the first openly gay person to be premier of the country.
The more right-leaning Flemish electorate has already expressed concern about being led by a French-speaking Socialist — and what is more one whose command of Dutch is limited.
A poll in Le Soir showed just 29 percent of Flemish people have confidence in Di Rupo, although his support in French-speaking Wallonia was 69 per cent.
N-VA, a party that wants Flanders to break free from Belgium, has 35 per cent of support among Flemish voters.
Talks including N-VA were deadlocked for months, prompting speculation that 181-year-old Belgium could break apart.
The N-VA’s eventual exit opened the door for a deal resolving electoral boundaries around the capital Brussels, devolution of more powers to the regions and financial transfers, issues over which Belgium’s linguistic groups have argued for years.
