Expertise in complex national politics will save EU Council agenda, Belgium claims

As Belgium takes over the rotating EU Council presidency, Prime Minister Alexander De Croo and Foreign Minister Hadja Lahbib said the country’s experience with national political hurdles will guide the bloc through the many challenges of the upcoming six-month-long election run-up.

It took the Belgians 16 months of negotiations to form a government but led by current Prime Minister Alexander De Croo, seven different parties representing the French-Flemish territorial divide reached an agreement in September 2020.

This ‘compromis à la belge’ – finding a compromise no matter how difficult the starting point – is what the EU needs for the unstable six-month period before the European elections in June, Foreign Minister Hadja Lahbib told the press, including Euractiv, on Monday during the presidency kickoff at the Egmont palace.

“We Belgians, we always find a solution,” Lahbib said. 

However, this time, the Belgians have just three months to close as many as possible of the 150 pending files before the European Parliament’s last plenary session in April.

“We’re used to that, we’re used to tackling a lot of things in a time crunch, that is often the case in national politics and the case of regional as well,” De Croo told reporters. 

Belgium has a complex multi-level governance system, with three regional governments – Brussels, Wallonia, and Flanders – overseen by the federal government and more than 10 political parties with federal parliamentary representation. On top of that, there is also a government for the German-speaking and French-speaking communities. 

This functions and is managed in three official languages: Flemish, French and German. 

De Croo and Lahbib said such territorial and linguistic diversity makes Belgium the perfect EU broker.

The Belgian federal government has brought in its complex territorial reality by including regional ministers in the Council’s chairmanship roster.

In charge of environment files will be Brussels regional minister Alain Maron, while Walloon ministers chair territorial planning, housing, tourism and R&D topics, and Flemish ministers take care of industry, fisheries, culture, youth, and media. 

The ministers have plenty on their plate, starting with key Green Deal files such as the net-Zero Industry Act and the packaging waste regulation, passing through the mid-term revision of the EU’s budget, and ending in the bloc’s membership applications. 

Tob job reshuffling and the Orbán question 

Even if the EU Council presidency ministers manage to find political agreements for the pending legislation, further challenges remain. 

Belgium’s presidency may also have to endure top EU officials abandoning their posts and looking to secure a political future.

To date, no less than six European Commissioners have left their posts or indicated they would do so, and most recently, European Council President Charles Michel announced he would leave his top job to run for the EU elections.

De Croo seems unphased, though. “This is what politicians do, participate in elections,” he said when asked about Michel’s announcement. 

Michel’s decision spurred fears that Hungary’s Prime Minister Viktor Orbán could take over as the interim European Council president even though he is at odds with the rest of EU leaders as he is blocking further financial aid to Ukraine and has been criticised for eroding basic rule of law values in Hungary.

Still, De Croo is confident his Belgian political skills will help him bring consensus among the 27 leaders.

“Do I have any messages to give to Viktor Orbán? Yes, but I will give it directly to him and not through the press because I think that’s one of the issues that when there is too much communication and open letters and so on, it makes things quite hard,” De Croo added. 

Belgium’s vision for the future

After the European Parliament ends work in April, the Belgian presidency will have plenty of time to focus on building up the priorities for the next legislative cycle starting after the EU elections, which the Belgians say should focus on the green transition and boosting European industry competitiveness.

“Too much climate and industry has been opposed one against the other, I think that is not the right approach. Keeping especially heavy and energy-intensive industry in Europe is the most important thing to achieve our worldwide climate objectives,” De Croo added. 

The priorities for the next legislative term, he said, also include the need to reform the EU in view of the new impetus for the bloc’s enlargement, with a discussion on the EU’s future priorities, governance model, and financing.

De Croo also seeks to boost the EU’s influence in world affairs to “lead the discussion”, as Europeans often pay the price for international crises, he said.

[Edited by Alice Taylor]

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