Open VLD, now known as Anders, and CD&V held concrete talks at the start of Belgium’s Vivaldi government about merging into a single party, former Open VLD chairman Egbert Lachaert has said.
In an interview with Het Nieuwsblad, Lachaert said he discussed the plan with then CD&V chairman Joachim Coens, with the senior leadership of both parties also involved.
The aim, he said, was to create one centre-right broad-based party modelled on Germany’s CDU, the Christian Democratic Union.
Lachaert, who recently became an independent MP, said the talks collapsed because of too much internal resistance in both parties.
Related News
- ‘Eurobonds are common sense’: Rousseau calls for bigger European investment
- Why a record number of people became Belgian in 2025
- Theatre of war: The Western Front, drag shows and the politics of memory
He also said Sammy Mahdi, who succeeded Coens as CD&V leader, opposed the idea. According to Lachaert, N-VA leader Bart De Wever also became aware of the plan and urged some CD&V figures not to support it.
At the time, the proposal was to build a centre-right bloc within the Vivaldi coalition through Open VLD and CD&V, with the possibility of contesting the 2024 election as a single party.
He said both CD&V and Open VLD were polling at about 12-13% at the time, meaning a merged force could have commanded around 25%, with the prime minister and several senior ministers as its main public faces.
Lachaert said such a move would have posed a major threat to N-VA. That, he said, would have left N-VA squeezed between the new alliance and Vlaams Belang.
Lachaert added that further talks took place two years later, this time also involving N-VA, but said those discussions were less concrete.
The proposal then was for the three parties to form a temporary cartel for the 2024 election built around roughly five key policy proposals.
