Listen: What does Belgium’s budget deadlock mean for the country?

Production: By Europod, in co-production with Sphera Network. EUobserver is proud to have an editorial partnership with Europod to co-publish the podcast series “Briefed” hosted by Léa Marchal. The podcast is available on all major platforms. Find the full transcript below: Belgium’s government is stuck on next year’s budget. The prime minister, Bart De Wever, even offered his resignation to the king last week because of that. The king refused and told him to find a deal. So what happens if the government doesn’t get there in time? First, a quick recap for those who haven’t followed. The Belgian government has been trying to pass its budget for next year. And it cannot. That led De Wever to hand in his resignation to king Philippe. But on Friday, the king turned it down. His message to the prime minister was simple: find an agreement. To understand why this is so hard, you have to look at who is sitting around the table. The government is made up of no fewer than five parties. On the Flemish side, there are the nationalists of the N-VA, the christian democrats and the socialists. On the French-speaking side, you find Les Engagés, a centrist party, and the MR, for Mouvement Réformateur, which sits on the right. Five parties, from the nationalist right to the socialist left. You can imagine how difficult it is to agree on anything. And what makes it particularly tough is the size of the effort: €10 bn in savings to find for next year’s budget. Why 10 billion? That is the prime minister’s proposal. It’s meant to satisfy the European Union’s requirements, and also to leave a bit of margin, just in case. Belgium has to follow a trajectory to bring its deficit back to an acceptable level. And De Wever has always been a supporter of budgetary discipline, so this is consistent with his positions. But of course, every party has its own red lines. Its own sectors it wants to protect from cuts. Healthcare is at the heart of the debate. Nobody agrees on how big the effort should be. Think of hospitals, or the reimbursement of medical care: for some parties like les Engagés or the socialists, cutting there is simply unacceptable, while others see it as one of the few places where large savings are possible. Then there is the question of raising VAT. Here again, the coalition partners hold very different views. For some, it’s a fair way to share the burden. Bart De Wever has suggested to raise the normal rate by 1 percent and changing the VAT rate for food from 6 to 9% percent. Again, something unbearable even for the right. So what happens if there is no agreement by tomorrow? What is looming is a system called “provisional twelfths”, or “douzièmes provisoires” in French. We’ve already talked about this principle in this podcast, in the context of the European Union’s budget. And it works in the same way here. The idea is to take the budget of the current year, 2026, and repeat it, month after month. One twelfth at a time. It sounds simple. But in practice, it creates real difficulties. Because it rules out any new investment and any new spending. The state can only pay for current expenses that were decided earlier. So no new project can actually get off the ground. Imagine a ministry that wanted to launch a new programme in January: it would have to wait. The money simply isn’t there. And there is another issue: debt. As we said, those €10 bn in savings are about meeting the EU’s budgetary rules. It’s a commitment Belgium has made. And you can’t simply postpone savings until later. The longer you wait, the more the deficit grows. So provisional twelfths are not an ideal solution. But they do save the furniture. And De Wever has already warned that the government will have to use this mechanism. It wouldn’t be the first time. It was already the case at the beginning of this year, 2026, and it lasted until March!