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Belgium has succeeded after almost eight months of talks in forming a governing coalition, to be led for the first time by a rightwing, nationalist party as anti-establishment political forces increase their power in Europe.
Bart De Wever, a founding member of the N-VA party, will be prime minister. N-VA has advocated for greater independence for Flanders, Belgium’s Dutch-speaking half, and pushed for it and Wallonia, the French-speaking part, to exist as confederal states.
After De Wever met with King Philippe late on Friday, the palace announced that a government agreement had been reached.
Maxime Prévot, leader of Les Engagés, one of the coalition partners, said: “Here we are! Belgium finally has a courageous and responsible government agreement that thinks about future generations.”
De Wever initially reacted on X, quoting Julius Caesar on crossing the Rubicon: Alea iacta est! (the die is cast).
The Flemish nationalist will be the first N-VA politician to become prime minister, having led the party since 2004. He has been mayor of Antwerp, the country’s second-largest city, since 2013.
As mayor, he has advocated for strong measures to crack down on cocaine smuggling at Antwerp’s port, including calling in the army.
He recently wrote On Woke, a book in which he blames “a good part of the intellectual elite” for pushing people towards more extreme rightwing groups.
De Wever will join the ranks of a growing number of far-right EU leaders, causing concern among Brussels officials and centrist governments over a potential lack of unity in taking on Russia over the war in Ukraine and in dealing with US President Donald Trump.
If he is sworn in by Monday, one of De Wever’s first appointments could be to attend an EU leaders’ retreat focused on European defence.
The new coalition, known as Arizona because the parties’ colours align with those of the US state’s flag, will also include the Flemish Christian Democrats (CD & V) and left-wing Vooruit, and on the francophone side, the liberal Mouvement Réformateur (MR) and centrists Les Engagés.
NV-A holds 24 of the 82 seats held by coalition parties in the national parliament.
Belgium has a history of long government formation, in part because of its regional division, which means parties with different linguistic and political affinities have to negotiate to form a joint federal government.
In 2011, the country broke the record for the longest time of any democracy spent without a government in peacetime — 541 days, with an agreement reached after almost 500 days of talks.
The Arizona talks almost failed at the last minute, with talks running over time and late into Friday night.
In the election in June last year, N-VA won the largest share of votes with about 16 per cent, followed by Vlaams Belang (VB), a far-right party that advocates for the full secession of Flanders, which has been sidelined in the coalition talks.
The negotiations between the five coalition parties were complicated by ideological differences on policy areas, including fiscal reform and the budget. De Wever had been calling for radical tax cuts and fiscal reform, which was hard to swallow for the leftist Vooruit party.
