King Philippe has declined to accept the resignation of Belgium’s prime minister, Bart De Wever, and has asked him to resume negotiations on the 2027 budget immediately. De Wever offered his resignation on Monday 2 November after talks inside the five-party coalition broke down. The Royal Palace set out the outcome of the ensuing consultations on Friday 6 November.
The sequence was set out in stages. The king deferred his decision when the resignation was first tendered, then consulted the leaders of all five coalition parties. Each of them reaffirmed a determination to reach a budget path covering the next three years. On that basis the king asked De Wever to restart talks at once, and fixed 16 November for a further report.
The size of the gap
Belgium enters the winter with the largest deficit in the euro area. European Commission forecasts put the shortfall at 5.2 per cent of GDP, with debt above 110 per cent of national income this year. Those are projections rather than outturns, and they are the figures the five coalition partners are arguing over.
Only three euro area members carry a heavier relative debt burden on the same forecasts: France at 116 per cent, Italy at 137 per cent and Greece at 146 per cent. Taken together, the two figures describe a country borrowing heavily while its debt stock is already high.
The dispute inside the government is about taxation of the highest incomes and of wealth. The partners, N-VA, MR, Vooruit, CD&V and Les Engages, have not bridged it. De Wever had set a target of cutting the deficit by EUR 10 billion, a figure that defines the scale of the tax rises or spending reductions still under discussion.
Governing month by month
Without an agreed path, parliament will not have time to legislate a full budget before January. The alternative is a run of provisional monthly budgets, which authorise spending for short periods and freeze the wider decisions in place. De Wever has told parliament that governing that way would amount to a serious failure.
Twelve such authorisations would be needed next year, one for each month, because parliament will not have the time to pass a full budget once the calendar turns. Departments and public services would then work to short horizons while the wider tax and spending decisions stayed open. A monthly authorisation does not by itself deliver the EUR 10 billion reduction in the deficit that De Wever had targeted.
What happens next
The 16 November report is the next fixed point. It comes two weeks after the resignation was tendered, giving the five partners until then to convert a shared intention into figures on taxation. That report is the only date the palace has set. Nothing in its statement commits the five parties to a figure, and the coalition continues in office in the meantime.
For households, and for anyone dealing with a Belgian public body, the difference between an agreed three-year path and provisional monthly budgets is felt in decisions that are postponed rather than taken: spending commitments, the tax treatment of higher incomes and assets, and the shape of the 2027 budget itself. For the euro area, a founding member entering January without an annual budget is a matter for the fiscal rules that bind the currency area, and one that other finance ministers have reason to watch.
