Bart De Wever’s Resignation Sits With the King While Belgium’s Budget Clock Runs Out

“The King holds his decision in suspense.” That was the Royal Palace’s own formulation on Monday. It came in a communiqué of a few lines, after Bart De Wever spent about 90 minutes with King Philippe and offered the resignation of his government. The King, the palace said, will begin consultations on Tuesday with the presidents of the majority parties, and De Wever will be received again on Friday. The palace added that the King regretted the absence of an agreement that would give the country a credible budget, and appealed to everyone’s sense of responsibility, the general interest and compromise. “In light of the large geopolitical uncertainty and severe economic challenges, the country can’t afford a long political crisis,” the palace said.

The audience followed a night that ended without a deal. De Wever’s restricted cabinet, the kern of the prime minister and his deputy prime ministers, sat from 9 p.m. on Sunday until about 1 a.m. on Monday. De Wever arrived at the palace at 9:30 a.m. and left without speaking to the press. Monday was a public holiday in Belgium, and the King cut short a holiday in England to receive him, according to El País. Nothing in the palace statement says the resignation was accepted, and nothing says it was refused.

De Wever had spent the weekend in one-to-one talks with his deputy prime ministers, Vincent Van Peteghem and Maxime Prévot on Saturday, Frank Vandenbroucke and David Clarinval on Sunday, and the talks still had no balance when the kern sat down. The package at issue is about €10 billion in savings and extra revenue by 2029. Vooruit, the Flemish socialists, want the wealthiest Belgians to contribute about €1.5 billion. Les Engagés, the francophone centrists, put €1 billion from the strongest shoulders as their minimum and have said they could accept €1.5 billion. The distance between those two positions is €500 million. That is a twentieth of the package. The instruments named are a higher capital-gains tax, a higher stock-exchange tax and a strict exit tax. Les Engagés proposed raising the capital-gains tax to 15% on 1 November, and a leaked list of the party’s tax measures unsettled the talks two days before the deadline. Clarinval, for the liberal MR, said the situation remained blocked. The volume of tax on the table was still far too high, he said. VRT reported more than €3 billion in levies. He blamed Vooruit for holding out against deeper spending cuts, including to healthcare.

Prévot renewed his party’s case within hours of the palace audience. “A contribution from those with substantial financial means is legitimate,” he wrote on X. “This sharing of the burden between the wealthiest and other citizens is a matter of balance for the future.” He told VRT there was a 50/50 chance of new elections. He called on the coalition parties to return to the table. Leaving the failed kern in the small hours, he had sounded more hopeful from his car. He hoped it could still work out the next day (translation from Dutch).

The general government deficit reached 5.2% of GDP in 2025, the European Commission’s forecast says. That was up from 4.4% in 2024. Income- and wealth-tax revenue fell. Spending on defence and social benefits rose. The Commission expects the deficit to hold at 5.2% this year and widen to 5.4% in 2027. Defence spending rises from 1.4% of GDP in 2025 to 1.8% in 2027. Debt stood at 107.9% of GDP at the end of 2025. It is projected to reach 112.8% in 2027. The Commission’s May forecast put this year’s ratio at 110.5%, behind only Greece, Italy and France in the euro area. Belgium has been under the European Union’s excessive deficit procedure since July 2024 and must bring the deficit below 3% by 2029.

Belgium’s 10-year bonds yielded 4.39% on Monday afternoon. France’s yielded 4.90%. Germany’s yielded 3.29%. Four months ago the Belgian yield stood at 3.48%. De Wever has warned for months of an interest snowball, in which the state borrows simply to pay the interest on what it already owes. Warnings reported from the National Bank of Belgium and the Debt Agency put the snowball’s start as early as 2028 or 2029. That is two years earlier than previously projected. Maturing debt is being refinanced at higher rates.

Midday on Tuesday was the deadline VRT reported for a deal, if the budget was to reach parliament in time to pass before the end of the year. Without one, Belgium falls back on provisional twelfths. Monthly spending is capped at one-twelfth of the previous year’s budget. There is no room for new policy. Belgium began 2026 under that arrangement, and De Wever has said he will not accept it again. The coalition itself is split on whether it matters. Vooruit’s chairman, Conner Rousseau, has said provisional twelfths would not be the end of the world. Groen’s Matti Vandemaele called a second straight year of them a humiliation for a sitting prime minister. VRT political journalist Bart Verhulst said the kern could reconvene in the early afternoon for a final attempt at a deal.

In October 2025 the same stand-off brought the government to the brink. De Wever went to the King and asked for a 50-day extension rather than offering his resignation. Marathon talks that ran from Sunday morning into Monday produced agreement on 24 November 2025: €9.2 billion in savings by 2029, through tax increases on share purchases, plane tickets and natural gas, a new tax on banks, and spending cuts. The agreement did not avert a three-day national strike against pension reforms that started the same day.

The government now in office took office on 3 February 2025, after nearly eight months of negotiations following the June 2024 elections, with 81 of the Chamber’s 150 seats. Its five parties span the linguistic divide that shapes every Belgian negotiation: three Dutch-speaking parties, the N-VA, CD&V and Vooruit, and two French-speaking parties, the MR and Les Engagés. The record for how long that divide can keep a country waiting is 541 days, the formation that followed the 2010 election and ended with Elio Di Rupo sworn in on 6 December 2011. Alexander De Croo’s formation, the one De Wever replaced, took 493 days.

A new government can still be formed from the current parliament if the King accepts the resignation. The King can also appoint a formateur to try. Dissolving the Chamber after a government resignation requires the Chamber’s own assent by an absolute majority. Carl Devos, a political scientist at Ghent University, read the King’s holding decision as a way of keeping pressure on the negotiators, as reported by Le Monde Moderne. Yvan Verougstraete, the president of Les Engagés, called the situation grave and said he would bring concrete proposals to the King. The palace consultations run from Tuesday to the Friday audience, and what the five party presidents say to the King in that interval is not public.

A commenter writing as pieternuyts85 addressed De Wever directly on Instagram: “Rather offer your resignation than distribute the burdens fairly and also make the richest people contribute. I think it is now quite clear whom BDW represents” (translation from Dutch). Olivier Knockaert, commenting on Facebook, predicted the ending before the King had given one: “Same old story as always. They are now making the population believe that new elections are coming, but the king does not accept the government’s resignation and suddenly they find a last-minute solution. Belgium is and remains a failed state!” (translation from Dutch).

“When is he going to address us, the plebs, for once, with a bit more explanation about everything?” wrote a commenter using the handle awomancalledk.ristina on the VRT NWS Instagram post (translation from Dutch). Luk Van Nieuwenhuysen, on Facebook, put the crisis outside the budget altogether: “When will people finally come to the realisation that this country consists of two nations, each of which must solve its own problems?” (translation from Dutch). Prévot and Clarinval argued about who pays and how much. The four posts argued about whether anyone is told the truth, whom the prime minister serves, and whether one state can hold two nations. None of them mentioned the midday deadline, the Commission’s figures, or the Friday audience.

The coalition takes its name from the colours of its five parties, which match the flag of the American state of Arizona. The constitution requires equal numbers of Dutch-speaking and French-speaking ministers in the Council of Ministers.