De Wever cancels his Dublin trip and sees Prévot today in the third round of his budget meetings
After Clarinval with Bouchez and Vandenbroucke with his chief of staff, it is the turn of Les Engagés, with CD&V following on Wednesday.
Prime Minister Bart De Wever (N-VA) will skip two European gatherings in Dublin on Thursday and Friday: the European Political Community, a forum of around fifty leaders set up in 2022 after Russia's invasion of Ukraine, and an informal EU summit whose agenda includes artificial intelligence. According to La Libre and Business AM, he is putting the budget talks in Brussels first. It has not been announced who will represent Belgium in Dublin.
The party-by-party meetings began on Monday afternoon with the MR. Deputy Prime Minister David Clarinval arrived at 16 Rue de la Loi with party leader Georges-Louis Bouchez, DH and La Libre reported. VRT NWS said the meeting lasted about two hours and both men left without comment. Bouchez defended his presence on social media: as long as it is unclear whether the budget stays within the coalition agreement or that agreement needs adjusting, he argued, the party leader belongs at the table. In the evening Vooruit deputy prime minister Frank Vandenbroucke followed, accompanied not by party leader Conner Rousseau but by his chief of staff Magali Feys. That meeting, which lasted just over an hour, also produced no statements.
Today it is the turn of Deputy Prime Minister Maxime Prévot (Les Engagés), followed on Wednesday by Vincent Van Peteghem (CD&V). The other parties are keeping their leaders out of the talks for now, although La Libre says that could change if the coalition agreement itself is reopened. VRT journalist Rob Heirbaut reads the prime minister's cleared diary as a sign that he wants a deal by the end of the week. On Monday 16 November De Wever reports back to the king.