Tommelein will quit Flemish government this month rather than wait for elections

Tommelein will quit Flemish government this month rather than wait for elections
Lydia Peeters

Bart Tommelein, Flemish minister for finance and energy, will give up his post at the end of the month instead of waiting for the regional elections in May next year as previously announced, he said. Tommelein’s party, Open VLD, has formed a coalition in his home town of Ostend, and he intends to become mayor, replacing former minister Johan Vande Lanotte. In order not to cause disruption within the Flemish government for such a brief period, he promised to stay until the elections, after which a new government will be formed.

Instead, he has chosen to take up his mayoral post at the end of the year.

His replacement as minister will be party colleague Lydia Peeters (pictured), currently serving a fourth term as mayor of Dilsen-Stokkem in Limburg province. She will pick up Tommelein’s portfolios, and will be replaced as mayor by Sofie Vandeweerd.

Tommelein replaced Annemie Turtelboom in 2016 when she resigned over a controversy over energy surcharges. Then, he came across from the federal government, where he had been secretary of state for social fraud, privacy and the North Sea. He also took up the post, largely nominal, of deputy minister-president; that title will now go to his party colleague Sven Gatz, minister for culture, youth and Brussels affairs.

Peeters, meanwhile, will head the Open VLD list in Limburg for the regional elections in May, which the party hopes will see more women returned to office in the Flemish parliament, as well as the federal parliament, for which elections take place at the same time.

“They asked me on Wednesday, and I said yes right away,” she told Het Belang van Limburg newspaper. “I still have to familiarise myself with the dossiers. My first stop will be in Ostend, to see Bart.”

Alan Hope
The Brussels Times


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