N-VA said in its program it would seek to put the brakes on growth of Belgium’s health care budget, while Forward wants to keep the current growth intact.
If the talks were to succeed, the composition of Belgium’s federal government would reflect that of the regional governments on both sides of the country’s language border.
In Flanders, the N-VA, the CD&V and Forward are currently trying to form a government; while in Wallonia, the southern French-speaking region of Belgium, the MR and Les Engagés have expressed the intention to govern together. Talks on those governments are further along than for the federal government, and could finish this month.
Belgian Prime Minister Alexander de Croo’s liberal Open Flemish Liberals and Democrats took a walloping in the vote; the party said it would not seek to join the government.
The current pace of federal government formation is unprecedented in Belgium — for its haste. It took a glacial 541 days to form a government in 2010 and 2011.
Belgium is one of the countries that the European Commission recently reprimanded for its excessive deficit. The country’s deficit reached 4.4 per cent of GDP last year.
Camille Gijs contributed reporting.
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