The Belgian Prime Minister, Bart de Wever, presented his resignation this Monday after failing to negotiate the country's new budget, after several weeks of talks between parliamentary groups. The president believes that he cannot continue in office in the face of a political crisis that has "worsened" in the negotiation of the accounts, and he has made this known to the king.
The Executive's objective was to maintain savings of around 10,000 million euros, something that the parties were not willing to go through. And, right now, Belgium does not comply with the deficit and debt standards set by the European Union. What's more, the parties had been asking for days for the departure of the prime minister if he was not able to forge an agreement. The resignation, in fact, comes after another weekend of conclaves, even at dawn, that have not served to bring positions closer together.
"Putting the budget in order is the most important reason for the existence of your government, but each budget round becomes a search for new taxes and provisional measures," reacted, for example, from the Flemish radicals of the Vlaams Belang. The Belgian press, in this context, has already opened the possibility that in the next steps a new Government will be directly formed without the need to go through elections. Of course, the most likely thing is an electoral call that will unblock the situation, because last year De Wever tried to present his resignation in the face of the economic and political crisis that the country is experiencing.
His fall is that of the most particular prime minister that Belgium has ever had and probably occurs in the deepest recent crisis of a country that moves well through instability... at least until now. De Wever made history by becoming the first Flemish nationalist at the head of the Belgian Government. He faces the paradox of having to support and keep united the State whose disintegration he defended for decades from number 16 Rue de la Loi (seat of the premier), in the heart of the European quarter: paradoxes of life.
A historian from the University of Leuven, Bart de Wever began his career in the academic field before making the leap to the political front line as co-founder of the New Flemish Alliance (N-VA) in 2001 and assuming its leadership in 2004. With a socially conservative and economically liberal ideology, he transformed his formation into the hegemonic force of Flanders by criticizing financial transfers to Wallonia and demanding greater autonomy, evolving over time from explicit separatism towards a confederal model.
His long period as mayor of Antwerp between 2013 and 2025 strengthened his reputation as a pragmatic strategist and served as a platform for him to project himself on a national scale. Characterized by a direct style, an incisive use of irony and an agile command of public debate, his figure has constantly aroused suspicion in French-speaking Wallonia due to his firm positions on national identity and historical memory.
To access the head of Government, De Wever had to weave the Arizona coalition, a complex alliance of five parties that brings together Flemish nationalists, socialists, liberals and Christian Democrats after seven months of intense negotiations. Upon assuming federal management, he set budgetary discipline, labor market and pension reform, strengthening security, and tightening immigration policies as priorities.
However, his agenda of fiscal rigor now clashes with the lack of agreement on an adjustment plan of approximately 10 billion euros in tax cuts and increases. The budget stagnation has not only tested the cohesion of his cabinet, but also exposes De Wever's underlying dilemma: he has shown that he is not capable of supporting a state whose future he once questioned.
