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Belgian king accepts prime minister’s resignation, say reports Belgian king asks prime minister to stay on until May elections
(35 minutes later)
The king of Belgium has accepted the resignation of Charles Michel as prime minister but asked him to stay on at the head of a caretaker government until elections are held in May, Belgian media reported. The king of Belgium has accepted the resignation of Charles Michel as prime minister but asked him to stay on at the head of a caretaker government until elections are held in May.
After two days of talks, King Philippe had noted a willingness among political party leaders to guarantee the functioning of government on day-to-day business, state broadcaster RTBF said, quoting palace sources. Michel, a Francophone liberal, had led a four-party coalition government that fell earlier this month when the largest party, the New Flemish Alliance (N-VA), quit over objections to a UN migration pact.
The royal palace was not available to confirm the reports. Belgium is due to go the polls on 26 May. Subsequent efforts to relaunch as a minority administration failed and Michel submitted his resignation on Tuesday after losing a confidence vote.
The king asked party leaders to ensure the government can handle a number of key issues over the coming months, in particular the 2019 budget. The Belgian king, who plays an unusually active role for a constitutional monarch, accepted Michel’s resignation on Friday after meeting leaders from most of Belgium’s political parties at the palace in recent days.
Michel, who turned 43 on Friday, submitted his resignation on Tuesday as pressure built on his government after the biggest party in his coalition quit over his support for a UN migration pact. A statement from the palace carried by state broadcaster RTBF said King Philippe had asked Michel to lead a government of “current affairs”, effectively a caretaker administration. The king said that following his meetings he saw “political will to guarantee the good management of the country until the next elections.
Belgium is no stranger to political chaos, and building a coalition and cabinet that respect the balance between parties from the Dutch-speaking north of the country, Flanders, and French-speaking Wallonia has proved a trial for many administrations. He also called on politicians to provide “an appropriate response to the economic, budgetary and international challenges” and meet the population’s expectations on “social and environmental levels”.
The kingdom went for 589 days without a government in 2010-11 – a world record at the time – because politicians in Flanders, the wealthier part of Belgium that makes up almost 60% of the country’s 11.5 million population, and Wallonia, could not agree on a policy programme following elections. The statement appears to end speculation about snap elections in the new year. The “orange-blue” coalition, made up of Flemish Christian Democrats, Flemish liberals and Michel’s French-speaking liberal party, is expected to continue in office.
Belgium also has a small German-speaking community. A caretaker administration is a familiar concept to Belgians. The country went 589 days without a government during a political crisis in 2010 and 2011, setting a record that was only recently surpassed by the Northern Ireland executive. Caretaker governments are not able to make major decisions and budgets are are drawn up on the basis of the previous year’s numbers.
It is the first time that Philippe has faced such a crisis. He ascended to the throne in 2013 after his father, King Albert II, abdicated for health reasons. Michel’s government was an experiment for Belgium, which is divided into a richer Flemish-speaking region and a French-speaking part that is struggling to deal with industrial decline. A fragile four-party coalition, it included the N-VA, which officially wants an independent Flanders, but only one Francophone party, Michel’s liberals.
This time around, the Flemish rightwing N-VA party quit after Michel sought parliamentary approval for the UN global compact against its wishes, branding his new minority government “the Marrakech coalition”, after the city where the migration treaty was adopted on 10-11 December. The N-VA announced earlier this month that it was quitting the government because it would not support a UN migration compact. Despite its non-binding nature, Donald Trump’s administrationand several EU member states, including Austria and Hungary, rejected the pact. Belgian political analysts think the N-VA took a tough line because it feared losing votes to the far-right Vlaams Belang in the May elections.
The accord is non-binding, but the N-VA said it still went too far and would give migrants who were in Belgium without authorisation many additional rights. About 5,500 people attended an anti-migration protest organised by Vlaams Belang in Brussels on Sunday, when police used water cannon and teargas to disperse people.
Over the last two days, various party leaders suggested that the N-VA is simply too big an obstacle for Michel’s minority government to work around, but they were also reluctant to call snap elections when polls are due in five months. A poll for the newspaper Het Nieuwsblad carried out on the eve of Michel’s decision to resign showed that Vlaams Belang had doubled its share of the vote to 12% compared with previous elections, with the N-VA on 30%.
A noisy but relatively small gilets jaunes movement in Belgium has been calling for Michel’s resignation, but their at-times violent protests appear to have had little or no impact on the fate of his government.
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