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Conservative Bart De Wever was sworn in on Monday as Belgium’s new prime minister after securing a hard-fought coalition deal that shifts the country to the right.
Following seven months of intense negotiations, the agreement makes De Wever the first nationalist from Dutch-speaking Flanders to become Belgian premier.
A law-and-order candidate, whose coalition has already pledged to crack down on irregular migration, De Wever’s rise to power underscores a significant right-wing shift in European politics.
The 54-year-old, who in recent years has softened his stance on calls for Flanders to become an independent country, took the oath of office before King Philippe at the royal palace in Brussels.
From there, he headed straight to a gathering of EU leaders a few blocks away for discussions on defence and transatlantic relations, quipping to reporters that he was “jumping right in.”
On the day’s headline issue, De Wever stated that Belgium was committed to meeting NATO’s longstanding defence spending target of two per cent of GDP, up from the current 1.3 per cent.
“Europe has been a bit lazy on the topic of defence,” he remarked, arguing that Russian President Vladimir Putin “has woken us up.”
Faced with a dual challenge from President Donald Trump—threatening trade tariffs and pressuring allies to ramp up defence spending—De Wever emphasised that the EU must preserve its “relationship with the United States.”
De Wever’s N-VA party is part of the hard-right ECR group in the European Parliament, which also includes lawmakers from the parties of Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni and Czech leader Petr Fiala.
“Our ECR group now has three prime ministers at the European Council table and participates in the government of seven countries,” French hard-right lawmaker Marion Marechal celebrated on X.
Hard-right parties, often riding on anti-immigrant sentiment, performed strongly in the European Parliament elections last year and have topped recent national and regional votes in Austria, Germany, and the Netherlands.
AFP
