Guess who’s back?!
Bart De Wever, party leader of the separatist New Flemish Alliance, has been reappointed as the lead negotiator in talks to form a Belgian coalition government.
Belgium’s King Philippe asked De Wever to resume talks between the five possible coalition parties and to report back on Sept. 23, the palace said in a press release.
Philippe also discharged Maxime Prévot, from the Walloon Les Engagés party, who acted as a mediator after talks collapsed late last month following a summer-long effort by De Wever to build a coalition.
De Wever has been trying to form a center-right Cabinet that would include five parties: the New Flemish Alliance (right wing), the francophone liberal Reformist Movement (center right), the Christian Democrat and Flemish party (centrist), the Flemish Forward party (center left) and Les Engagés (centrist).
If De Wever succeeds, he will likely become the first Flemish separatist to lead Belgium’s federal government as prime minister.
Talks initially collapsed after a row over the budget and the proposed implementation of a capital gains tax, causing Belgium to become the only European Union country to miss an Aug. 31 deadline to nominate a candidate to become its next European commissioner.