Belgium’s "core cabinet" (the Prime Minister and his five deputy PMs) ended talks late on Wednesday evening without finding a deal on the budget for 2027, with ministers set to continue negotiations in the coming days in a bid to reach an agreement as quickly as possible.
The government’s top ministers had been meeting since 19:00 at the prime minister’s office in Brussels.
Although there had been speculation earlier in the day that the meeting might continue until a breakthrough was reached, Deputy Prime Minister Frank Vandenbroucke (Vooruit) had already played down expectations on arrival.
For the socialists, Prime Minister Bart De Wever's (N-VA) budget table was still not fair enough to serve as a basis for negotiations, and there was in any case too much work left to complete in a single night, according to those involved.
A few hours later, the meeting ended without progress. "We established this evening that there is no agreement," said Deputy Prime Minister David Clarinval of the francophone liberal MR.
CD&V’s Vincent Van Peteghem and Maxime Prévot of Les Engagés also confirmed that no deal had been reached.
Vandenbroucke did not speak to reporters afterwards, but one source explicitly blamed him for how the evening unfolded, saying: “He ruined the meeting.”
In a statement, the prime minister’s office said the core cabinet had agreed on Wednesday evening to review the budget table line by line in detail over the coming days in order to reach an agreement on fiscal consolidation as soon as possible.
The ministers will remain available during parliament’s recess week to continue the work.
In practical terms, Clarinval said this means the core cabinet will not meet again on the budget later this week. Instead, working groups will continue discussions before the core cabinet resumes next week, acknowledging that "the situation is difficult."
According to one source, there was no agreement either on the budget table itself or on the formal notifications accompanying the deal.
Another insider confirmed the explanation given by the prime minister’s office: it had simply proved impossible to go through the roughly 70-page note fully, line by line, in one sitting. The overall balance of the package also remained unresolved.
The delay means the core cabinet will now try to strike a deal during the parliamentary holiday week.
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If the budget is to be approved by parliament on time, an agreement must be reached by the end of this month. Otherwise, the government risks having to rely on provisional twelfths, a stopgap system under which monthly spending is authorised in the absence of a full budget.
De Wever has already made clear that he rejects that scenario.
"We will keep working towards a result," Prévot said. "Belgium is now borrowing at a higher interest rate than Greece. It is therefore necessary that we succeed in this budgetary exercise, difficult though we knew it would be."
"We must work on restoring the country. We have to be frank and accept that, in the short term, we need to take unpopular measures to protect our economy and our social model in the long term," he said. "Unfortunately, we do not have the luxury of trying to be popular. We simply have to be responsible, while also being fair in our choices."
As previously announced, the government is seeking €10 billion in savings.
De Wever wants to use that effort to bring Belgium’s budget back into line with European spending rules, while also avoiding a spiral of rising interest costs and easing pressure from the financial markets.
