Brussels’ political parties are meeting behind closed doors to discuss how to protect the capital from losing its regional status in a future state reform, La Libre reports.
With Belgium's federal and regional elections set for 9 June of next year, Brussels’ future will be one of the main points of contention between parties. For example, both the Flemish nationalists and Belgium’s Interior Minister Annelies Verlinden want the capital to fall under the authority of the Flemish and Walloon governments.
In response to these calls, Brussels’ francophone parties had initially met at the start of the year without their Flemish counterparts to discuss how to protect the capital’s regional status.
Credit: Belga / Thierry Roge
However, these meetings had garnered significant controversy when parties were accused of stoking linguistic divides by not inviting Flemish parties to the table. The secret nature of the talks had led to feelings of mistrust among the Flemish benches in parliament.
At the time, Brussels’ Mobility Minister Pascal Smet of the Flemish centre-left party Vooruit warned that “there will be no reform” if the Dutch-speaking parties were not a part of these discussions.
The French-speakers seem to have heeded Smet’s warnings, as La Libre reports that a new round of meetings with all of the parties in the Brussels Parliament are currently being held, the contents of which have been kept under wraps over fears of potential leaks.
The only party not to be invited are the Flemish nationalists N-VA, whose Brussels parliamentary leader Cieltje Van Achte told La Libre that “I would be willing to take part in these talks but I haven’t received an invitation.”
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While any ideas put forward by the N-VA are unlikely to have been brought forward in these secret meetings, one topic of discussion may have been the possibility of merging the capital’s municipalities.
Last week, freshly included in the talks over the region's future, the Flemish liberal party Open VLD sent the Belgian Budget Secretary Alexia Bertrand and her Brussels counterpart Sven Gatz out to detail its plans for institutional reform of the capital.
It now remains to be seen where these talks will lead with only a year left until voters decide what their vision for Brussels will be.
