2024–2025 Belgian government formation
Incumbent Prime Minister Alexander De Croo has announced his resignation[1] and his party's leader Tom Ongena has declared that Open Flemish Liberals and Democrats would not be a part of the next federal government.
She also declared that she desired to push a social design onto a future coalition that she notes is emerging to be on the right, which, in her eyes, will make negotiation very difficult.
He specifies that the Arizona formation would allow for relative coherence on a socio-economic level, but that it would make any prospect of institutional reform more difficult to negotiate.
During a new joint meeting of the central negotiators on 24 October, it was agreed that De Wever would draw up a new supernote, after the various parties had requested a considerable number of adjustments.
The intention was that the negotiators would further deal with the remaining sticking points of the other policy themes during the autumn break the following week, but Vooruit announced in a statement later that day that it wanted to wait until the formateur had presented his new supernote with accompanying budgetary tables.
However, no progress was made again: four of the five parties were prepared to continue negotiations on the basis of this note, but Vooruit still found it too unbalanced, particularly with regard to tackling the budget.
[22] In an attempt to straighten things out, De Wever held bilateral consultations with the chairmen of the Arizona parties on Sunday 3 November.
The 2024 regional election saw the decline of Open Vld, Groen, CD&V, and N-VA, with an increase of votes for Vooruit, PVDA and VB.
[27] On 14 June, following talks with Sammy Mahdi of CD&V and Melissa Depraetere of Vooruit, Bart De Wever announced that he would draft a preliminary memorandum before negotiations began between the three parties.
[28] On 19 June, Matthias Diependaele of N-VA was called upon to form government on the regional level, with Vooruit and CD&V announcing they are ready to begin negotiations.
While the incumbent government's so-called "rainbow coalition" is still mathematically possible, with its majority being held at 50 out of 75 seats, it has been deemed impossible due to PS's decision to remain in opposition.
[31] On 11 June, two days after the election, Maxime Prévot and Georges-Louis Bouchez announced their intent to launch negotiations to form a two-party majority government of MR and LE, with 43 out of 75 seats.
[33] On 11 July, MR and LE announced that they had agreed to form a new government and presented the outlines of this new agreement, which involved lowering taxes, removing the budget deficit by 2034, reducing the number of ministers and eventually dissolving the provinces, tackling unemployment, creating more places in child care and prohibiting smart phones in schools for children up to 12 years old.
On the Dutch-speaking side, N-VA, Open Vld, and Vooruit each lost a seat while Groen remained stable and VB gained one.
However, on 13 June, just 4 days after the election, it was announced that ProDG, the Christian Social Party (CSP) and PFF had finalised a coalition agreement and that Oliver Paasch would be Minister-President of the German-speaking Community for a third consecutive term, with a majority of 16 out of the 25 seats in the Parliament.
