Belgian Establishment Suffers Poll Loss as Far Right Surges

(Bloomberg) -- Belgian voters splintered the political landscape in national and regional elections, dealing a blow to mainstream parties, bolstering both the far right and communists, and leaving the country with an uphill struggle to form a government.

The extremist anti-immigrant Flemish Interest party scored its best poll result in at least 12 years at the expense of Bart De Wever’s Flemish Nationalists. De Wever’s party remained the largest group in both the Dutch-speaking north and the federal parliament and could even be indispensable for a majority in the Flemish region. Prime Minister Charles Michel’s Liberals lost support as did the Socialists, the biggest party in the French-speaking south.

“There are lots of losers today and I want to congratulate Flemish Interest with their victory,” De Wever told his supporters at a gathering in Brussels on Sunday. “The vote has made things very difficult. As the biggest Flemish party, we will invite all parties for exploratory talks.”

Seat projections by the Interior Ministry based on partial results showed De Wever’s nationalists set to get 25 seats in the 150-seat federal parliament, eight fewer than in 2014. His extremist rivals jumped to 18 seats from three, while the communist Worker’s Party of Belgium rose to 12 seats from two.

None of the coalitions that have ruled Belgium since the end of World War II would be able to form a majority, with the possible exception of the combination that ruled from 1999 to 2003: a six-party coalition of Socialists, Liberals and ecologists from both sides of the linguistic divide is projected at 76 seats. That is under the assumption that the long-standing refusal to bring the far-right into government holds.

With the federal coalition talks being steered by the royal palace, party leaders are expected to begin with assembling governments in the nation’s three regions --Flanders, Wallonia and Brussels-- first. Those regional coalitions could then act as either a catalyst or block on a deal at the federal level.

In a leaders’ debate on public broadcaster VRT, De Wever warned all his potential partners in the Flemish region that he won’t tolerate a federal coalition that has no majority among Dutch-speaking members of parliament.

In Belgium, the euro area’s sixth-largest economy, it takes on average almost 100 days to form a federal government. After the 2010 election, it took a world record 541 days.

--With assistance from Nikos Chrysoloras.

To contact the reporter on this story: John Martens in Brussels at jmartens1@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Lukas Strobl at lstrobl@bloomberg.net, Ben Sills, Jerrold Colten

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