Belgium recently experienced an uncharacteristic burst of optimism. Not because the country finally has a new government, eight months after the elections. Rather, with the selection of the singer Red Sebastian, Belgians are confident they’re on to a winner for the Eurovision Song Contest. Red, after all, is the colour of the country’s one unifying feature, the Red Devils national football team.
The mould-breaking new government is a lot less unifying – it is led and dominated for the first time by Flemish nationalists. The hard-right, nationalist mayor of Antwerp, Bart De Wever, is the new federal prime minister, and his Flemish nationalist N-VA is the largest party in what is called the “Arizona” coalition, after the colours in the American state’s flag.
The N-VA is seen by most other Belgian parties as the least-worst alternative to the even more extreme, Flemish ultra-nationalist Vlaams Belang (VB) party that was held to second place in the elections in June last year. The cordon sanitaire, the political firewall excluding VB, has held at the federal level but the new prime minister, De Wever, has adopted some of his rivals’ hardline rhetoric.
Migration is, unsurprisingly, a focus for the new government. De Wever has promised “the strictest migration policy ever” and also “the strictest you can have in Europe”. In his sights are war refugees, who will be restricted to a much less settled status, with a longer route to family unification and reduced access to benefits.
Harsh migration policy pledges are familiar, not only from Donald Trump but from like-minded Europeans such as Geert Wilders in the Netherlands and Herbert Kickl in Austria. De Wever, though, has always made a point of distancing himself from such extremes, even showing distaste for their brand of politics.
The new government is seen as the most right wing ever, but that is by Belgian standards. In contrast to the Netherlands, De Wever had to include a left wing party in his coalition, the Flemish social democratic Vooruit. In true Low Countries tradition, he needed another three partners for a majority: Walloon liberals and Christian democrats and also Flemish Christian democrats.
The number of ministers has shrunk from 20 to 15, fulfilling De Wever’s campaign pledge to have a smaller government.
In fact, if De Wever had his way, there wouldn’t be a Belgian federal government at all. It’s somewhat counterintuitive to have as federal prime minister a politician who poses such a danger to the continued unity of the country.
De Wever wants to take as many responsibilities as possible away from central government and transfer them to the already powerful regions. But above all, he wants to reduce the flow of Flemish money to the economically less dynamic Walloon region.
Reform of unemployment benefits and pensions is crucial to the success of the new government, which is confronted with a ballooning budget deficit for which the country has received a warning from Brussels. EU Brussels that is, not Belgian Brussels.
EU Brussels, while applauding his conservative fiscal impulses, has also gained another headache. N-VA belongs to the same hard right bloc in the European Parliament as Italy’s Giorgia Meloni. This means that yet another head of government in the EU will not belong to the mainstream coalition of European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen.
But the commission doesn’t seem to be overly concerned by De Wever. He is still seen as the hero who kept the far right dragon at bay. But that might be a mistake. De Wever would like to see an independent Flanders, firmly anchored in a “democratic Europe”. But he accepts he has no majority for this, and so for now he wants a stripped-down, confederate system. Likewise, he has called on the EU to stick to its core functions.
Some might call it conservative, others might say it’s selfish and shortsighted. But then, De Wever argues, how is Flanders different from other relatively wealthy regions such as Catalonia in Spain or Italy’s north in not wanting to be burdened by what it sees as underperforming regions?
If that’s De Wever’s take on things, it probably wouldn’t be long before an independent Flanders would also object to contributing payments to the EU. And you in the UK know all too well where that can lead.
Ferry Biedermann is a journalist living in Amsterdam writing on Europe, the Netherlands and Brexit. He is also a former Middle East correspondent
