Partly by not presenting himself as a community hardliner, Bart De Wever (N-VA) was able to win the election. “The conclusion that the time has come for Confederation is still surprising,” writes Tony Van de Kalseid.
The dust has now settled on the June 9 elections. In fact, three governments have already been formed. The election results once again show that opinion polls are relative. In 2019, opinion polls were a bit more accurate. Some time before the previous federal elections, opinion polls showed that Wallonia would move (further) to the left, that the PVDA-PTB, among others, would rise sharply, while Flanders would vote more to the right.
Then the media analysed that champagne had already been opened at the N-VA headquarters. If the two parts of the country drift further apart in terms of voting behaviour, this is a perfect excuse for further division among Flemish nationalists.
This argument seems to have been completely put aside after June 9.
What the polls did not expect this time was the clear electoral victory of the Revolutionary Movement party in the south of the country. A close race between MR and PS was usually expected. The latter proved to be the clear loser. The PTB is also recording losses in Wallonia. Les Engagés, which has moved to the right, was also not expected to advance so far. A real electoral revolution seems to have taken place in Wallonia.
To draw the conclusion from this observation that the time after June 9 is more ripe than ever for confederation, as Bart Maddens (University of Leuven) has repeatedly pointed out in recent weeks, is surprising.
Such statements essentially express concern about the real prospects for major reform in the state. And perhaps that is true. For many years, the alleged incompatibility between the political aspirations of the left-wing Wallonia and the right-wing Flanders has been used as a major motive for dividing Belgium. It was also the main reason why Bart De Wever has pushed his party further and further to the right over the years.
In this way, the N-VA managed to make itself attractive to a large part of the Flemish business community. In 2024, De Wever wanted to add a Walloon extension to this by also appearing in Wallonia. The business community is clearly not keen on very leftist recipes. This became increasingly frustrating, especially under Vivaldi, because it was still difficult to achieve right-wing policies or major reforms in Belgium. All the way, It seemed possible. Although one should not forget the years that Charles Michel (Mr.) spent as Prime Minister.
In any case, the identification of a site like Bart Maddens’s is primarily intended to increase pressure on federal coordinator Bart De Wever not to be content with a few “community drinks”. The same applies to the July 11 speeches by Jan Jambon and Liesbeth Homans (both from the N-VA). They were all seen as a warning to the N-VA president that the state reform should not be shelved this time, as happened in 2014.
As for the rest, they usually still contain confederate dreams that are far from reality. Bart Maddens experienced this when he sat down with MR Chairman George Louis Bouchez last month. The appointment is on Friday. Bouchez has repeatedly asked the question out loud, why on earth should we divide everything up if the policy they want to pursue in both parts of the country is almost the same. Dividing this up essentially entails two things: greater costs and greater complexity. But for whom or for what? A first reading of the political plans of the governments that formed the MR and Les Engagés in the Walloon region and in the French Community, in the Flemish holiday of all days, makes this question even more important.
Moderate De Weaver
The Flemish nationalists’ confederalist outlook still rests on the somewhat outdated image of Belgium as a two-party democracy. However, even long before the June 9 election result, that image was regularly criticised. For example, a 2019 study by the University of Antwerp, KU Leuven, VUB, ULB, and UCL showed that Although voting behaviour in Flanders and Wallonia (at the time) differed considerably, the basic ideas of voters in the north and south of the country were surprisingly close to each other. The difference in voting behaviour seems to be due mainly to a gap in the political offer. And it is precisely this gap that Georges-Louis Boucher (MR) and Maxime Prévost (Les Engagés) seem to have filled with brilliance.
Of course you can make an analysis that the “close majority” of voters in Flanders who vote for parties that, at least on paper, seek secession, became (slightly) larger after June 9. But to conclude from this that the voter in Flanders would have given a mandate to divide the country is more than a bridge too far. At the end of February 2024, Trends-Tendances published the results of the survey. This showed that a clear majority of Belgians (around 60 percent), including the Flemish people (55.7 percent), were in favor of reunifying the powers. The majority was also in favor of the idea among N-VA voters (52.2 percent), and even among Vlaams Belang voters (56.4 percent).
The fact that Bart De Wever won the elections in Flanders, or at least appeared to be the moral winner, is absolutely true. But De Wever managed to do so mainly by taking a very moderate position, especially at the societal level, especially in the last months before the elections.
He did this, among other things, by decisively closing the door to a coalition with Vlaams Belang a few weeks before the election, after much hesitation. De Wever went even further, decisively. To declare that Flemish independence was no longer his ultimate goal.No, Bart De Wever did not explicitly make state reform the focus of the last election. In this way he was able to secure the moderate right-wing voters, who have no interest in big societal adventures, and a large part of whom would have voted for the Open VLD. Let us assume that the N-VA blocked the formation of a federal government because no steps were taken to reform the state, despite the fact that a solid majority for the previous centre-right policy was within reach.
It is striking that most of the calls for major reforms in the state that have emerged since June 9 barely address the question of why it all happened.
As if this question has become redundant.
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