Urgent meeting on Saturday evening to address crisis within the Belgian Government
The government met again at Rue de la Loi in order to discuss the Migration Pact.
Supported by a large parliamentary majority, the MR, the CD & V, and the Open Vld want to approve the Pact, which will be adopted in Marrakech on December 10th and 11th. The Prime Minister Charles Michel committed himself on 27 September to the UN platform after a classic decision making process that brought together the administrations and ministerial offices concerned.
The parliament calls on the government explicitly to approve the Migration Pact. The N-VA voted against the resolution, the same as Vlaams Belang and the Popular Party.
The N-VA is against the pact
The ministers have agreed on the very favorable Belgian position, which was decided on the 12th of September. However, a series of of European countries have announced that they would not support the Pact, including Austria’s conservative Chancellor Sebastian Kurz. The nationalists have reviewed their judgment: although the text is non-binding and asserts the sovereignty of states, they fear that its provisions will bind Belgium in the future because judges would use it to counter the government’s policy.
For two weeks, the N-VA has been hammering out its opposition. Group leader in the House, Peter De Roover, and the Secretary of State, Theo Francken, invoke the sacred value of the sovereignty, “DNA” of the nationalists, facing an international order that dispossesses the states of their powers.
On the contrary, supporters of the Pact insist on the need for a multilateral framework for effective migration policy and recall that the provisions of the Pact are in no way contrary to Belgian policy.
