{{BRUSSELS}} {- Political negotiators in Belgium reached an agreement for a centre-right coalition government Tuesday (7 Octobe}r), 135 days after general elections.<\/p>\n
After four months of political stalemate, centre-right parties in Belgium have agreed to form a government, to be sworn in on Saturday.<\/p>\n
It will be led by French-speaking liberal Charles Michel, 38, who will be Belgium’s youngest PM since 1841.<\/p>\n
A deal was reached after 29 hours of talks – and 135 days after Belgians went to the polls.<\/p>\n
However, Belgium’s previous Socialist-led government was formed only after 541 days of deadlock.<\/p>\n
Mr Michel, from the Francophone liberal MR party, will head a coalition that includes three parties from Dutch-speaking Flanders, including the separatist New Flemish Alliance (N-VA).<\/p>\n
Belgian commentators have labelled the government the “Swedish coalition” because of the blue and yellow colours of the parties involved.<\/p>\n
“We’ve reached the summit, now we’re beginning our descent,” Kris Peeters of the Christian Democrat CD&V party told Belgian radio after the marathon talks on Wednesday.<\/p>\n
A party colleague of Mr Michel’s, Didier Reynders, praised his careful handling of the negotiations and his proposals to keep the budget deficit to a maximum 3% of GDP.<\/p>\n
“We’re going into a government where we’ll really going to make savings,” Mr Reynders said. “A government without the Socialists is already a reform in itself.”<\/p>\n
As well as a commitment to lower taxes, the new government plans to raise the pension age from 65 to 66 in 2025 and to 67 in 2030.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
{{BRUSSELS}} {- Political negotiators in Belgium reached an agreement for a centre-right coalition government Tuesday (7 Octobe}r), 135 days after general elections. After four months of political stalemate, centre-right parties in Belgium have agreed to form a government, to be sworn in on Saturday. It will be led by French-speaking liberal Charles Michel, 38, who […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":2000054389,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[101],"byline":[170],"hashtag":[],"class_list":["post-16749","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-internationl","byline-igihe"],"bylines":[{"id":170,"name":"IGIHE","slug":"igihe","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":8}],"contributors":[{"id":170,"name":"IGIHE","slug":"igihe","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":8}],"featured_image":{"id":2000054389,"url":"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/IMG\/logo\/arton16749.jpg","alt":"","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","width":0,"height":0,"sizes":{"thumbnail":{"url":"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/IMG\/logo\/arton16749.jpg","width":1,"height":1},"medium":{"url":"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/IMG\/logo\/arton16749.jpg","width":1,"height":1},"medium_large":{"url":"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/IMG\/logo\/arton16749.jpg","width":1,"height":1},"large":{"url":"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/IMG\/logo\/arton16749.jpg","width":1,"height":1},"full":{"url":"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/IMG\/logo\/arton16749.jpg","width":0,"height":0}}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16749","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16749"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16749\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2000054389"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16749"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16749"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16749"},{"taxonomy":"byline","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/byline?post=16749"},{"taxonomy":"hashtag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/hashtag?post=16749"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}