Right wing parties gained ground in Sunday’s national elections in Belgium, largely at the expense of left wing and green parties, prompting the liberal coalitionPrime Minister to fall on his sword and announce he will resign.
Belgian Prime Minister Alexander De Croo will resign, he said, reflecting on the poor performance of his governing coalition in the country’s ‘Super Sunday’ election which saw residents vote for their new parliament as well as regional representatives, and for their new members of the European Parliament.
While Belgium didn’t experience a landslide victory, the gaining of ground by a handful of right-wing parties and the cliff-edge collapse of the country’s two Green parties has been enough to shift the electoral picture in the country, making the present centrist-globalist coalition untenable.
Russia hawk De Croo said on Sunday night: “For us it was a particularly difficult evening, we lost. From tomorrow, I will be a resigning Prime Minister. But the liberals [will be back].” De Croo will stay on as caretaker Prime Minister until a new government can be formed, which in Belgium can typically take an extremely long time, over a year in some previous elections.
Early results suggest the conservative-nationalist Eurosceptic New Flemish Alliance (NVA) will be the largest party in Belgium, followed closely by right wing populist Eurosceptic Vlaams Belang (VB). VB were polled to perform stronger than they did, which may take some of the wind out of their sails on election night, but nevertheless it remains Belgium’s Green parties lost 11 of the 21 seats they held yesterday and that largest parties in the country which hosts the institutions of the European Union are Eurosceptic.
De Croo may not have been a household name in Europe outside of his native Belgium, but he made ripples at times, particularly in his occasional forays into American politics. As previously reported, he particularly stood out for his belligerent rhetoric on former U.S. President Trump, warning earlier this year “If 2024 brings us ‘America First’ again, it will be more than ever ‘Europe on its own’.”
The Belgian PM also couldn’t resist getting involved in 2022, when the U.S. Supreme Court overruled Roe v. Wade. He spoke out then to intone that he was “very concerned about implications of [the US Supreme Court] decision on Roe v Wade and the signal it sends to the world. Banning abortion never leads to fewer abortions, only to more unsafe abortions.
“Belgium will continue to work with other countries to advance [Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights] everywhere.”