Verhofstadt, leader of the Flemish Liberal and Democratic Party, charged with forming a new executive, gave birth to a coalition government between the two liberal parties, the two socialists and the two ecologists, which for the first time in forty years excluded the Christian-social. The political elections of 2003 led to the renewal of the government alliance between liberals and socialists, with Verhofstadt confirmed at the helm of the executive, which he held until the 2007 elections, in which the Flemish Christian Democratic party of Y. Leterme won the majority.. The difficulty of finding a program shared by the Flemish and French-speaking parties prevented the formation of the executive for a long time and it was only in March 2008 that Leterme was able to form a coalition government, which already resigned in December. After the appointment of the new premier, the Christian Democrat H. Van Rompuy, as president of the European Council, returned to the Leterme government in 2009; Resigned in April 2010, the latter assumed the post of interim minister in October of the same year, continuing the phase of profound political instability in the country. At the end of a crisis that lasted sixteen months, in October 2011 Flemings and French speakers reached an agreement on the new structure of the country thanks also to the mediating role played by the French-speaking socialist E. Di Rupo, who received from King Albert II the ‘task of conducting the negotiations for the institutional reform which would provide, among other things, greater autonomy for the federal regions in matters of taxation and health and a reorganization of the electoral district of Brussels-Halle-Vilvoorde. In December of the same year Di Rupo presented to the king the text of the agreement reached with the parties of the new governing coalition and assumed the office of premier, the first socialist and Walloon political leader since 1974 and head of the new executive after a crisis that lasted 535 days. In July 2013, King Albert II abdicated in favor of his son Philip. For Belgium 2006, please check computergees.com.
In the federal and regional elections held, concurrently with the European ones, in May 2014 Belgium de Wever, mayor of Antwerp and leader of the New Flemish Alliance (N-Va), clearly established himself , obtaining 33 seats in the Chamber, 43 in the Flemish Parliament and one fifth of the seats in the new indirectly elected Senate; the politician, however, refused to form the federal government entrusted to him by Philip I, who therefore assigned the task to C. Michel, leader of the Francophone reformist movement.
In foreign policy, the Belgium, a welcoming and multi-ethnic country, after the massacre in Paris on November 13, 2015, engaged in the fight against terrorism by arresting many foreign fighters, also responsible for the attack in Paris, who were hiding inside; On 22 March 2016, Brussels was the scene of an attack on the metro and the airport claimed by the IS in which dozens of people died and hundreds injured. In terms of migration policies, a conspicuous internal fault in the executive opened in December 2018 with respect to the decision to join the Global compact for migration: the ministers of N-Va, the first party in the ruling coalition, resigned, forcing Prime Minister Michel, in favor of the pact, to lead a minority government, and to resign himself a few days later, remaining in the office for the king until the Europeans set for May 2019. The consultations recorded the clear affirmation of the far-right party Vlaams Belang, ranking with 11.9% of the votes as the second in the country, preceded only by N-va (16%) and followed by the socialists (9.5%), both in sharp decline like the liberals of the outgoing premier (7.6%). Following the election of Prime Minister Michel to the presidency of the European Council, in October 2019 he was replaced by S. Wilmès; at the head of a provisional government supported by a minority coalition, the female politician was replaced in October 2020 by A. De Croo, supported by an alliance of liberals, socialists, environmentalists and Christian Democrats.
