“The special law which organizes Brussels institutions provides for a certain number of provisions making it possible to find solutions in the event of a blockage. At this stage we have not implemented them, but it is part of the range of possible solutions“, declared Ahmed Laaouej, president of the Brussels PS, questioned on this subject on Bel RTL this Tuesday morning.
The socialist believes that there is still political space and plans, for the moment, to manage affairs via the Brussels Parliament. The PS also tried this Wednesday to force the immediate examination of a text linked to rent capping, for which the MR did not fail to reproach it. “But in the event of a blockage, we will need to be able to consider all the solutions that will allow us to break the deadlock.”
David Leisterh had instructed a law firm to study this avenue
This is not the first time that this government option, in fact in the minority on the Dutch-speaking side, has been mentioned. At the beginning of November, a law firm provided a 16-page report, at the request of Brussels negotiators, and more specifically trainer David Leisterh, on ways out of the crisis to form a government.
Blockage in Brussels negotiations: a law firm approaches “an alternative route” to break the deadlock
In practice, the installation of a Brussels government requires a majority in both linguistic groups during the vote of confidence. The formation of a Brussels government, with a majority on both linguistic benches, is impossible due to the different exclusions put forward by the parties.
The approach mentioned by the law firm, however, makes it possible to circumvent this difficulty, via the implementation of the procedure known as the “individual responsibility of ministers”. Indeed, according to this document written by Marc Uyttendaele’s law firm, “nothing prohibits voting for an individual motion of no confidence against the current Minister-President (Rudi Vervoort) since it is adopted by a majority of the members of Parliament.
However, the French-speaking PS-MR-Engagés axis has a simple majority (within one vote, since the transfer of Ludivine de Magnanville from Défi to the MR) within the Brussels Parliament.
Likewise, nothing prohibits voting on motions of individual distrust against the other current French-speaking ministers in the government (Alain Maron, Écolo and Bernard Clerfayt, Défi) nor against the secretaries of state (Nawal Ben Hamou, PS and Barbara Trachte, Ecolo), these motions having to be adopted by a majority of the members of the French linguistic group.
Via this method, David Leisterh and the other French-speaking ministers could be appointed to the Brussels government, on the French-speaking side.
Rachid Madrane opposes Ahmed Laaouej’s position: “There should be no taboo in working with the N-VA in a Brussels government”
-Dutch-speaking ministers and state secretaries could in theory also be appointed in this way. But the initial problem would then arise: there would be four parties for only three positions. However, the solution found by the Dutch-speaking parties, with the creation of a post of Budget Commissioner allocated to the Open VLD, would fall through since it requires the validation of the French-speaking parties, therefore the PS.
In this plan, the current Dutch-speaking ministers (from the Groen, Vooruit and Open VLD groups) would then remain in place. The new French-speaking ministerial team would therefore govern Brussels with the old Dutch-speaking team.
Groen’s note
This path to breaking the deadlock had also been discussed, at the end of the summer, with the Dutch-speaking parties. The Dutch-speaking trainer had also requested a legal note from the Eubelius law firm, which The Free was able to consult this Wednesday. In this report, Eubelius underlines in particular the fact that he “nIt is not enough to replace the members of the regional government so that it once again has full powers“And affirms that it is not possible to set up a full government.”without the majority Dutch-speaking partners”. This method would not even make it possible, again according to the report, to redistribute skills between ministers.
“This note in fact shows that the PS proposal would in fact not change anything in the current situation of the governmentconcludes a Dutch-speaking source. The only thing that would change would be the title of Ahmed Laaouej, who could thus become minister (as well as David Leisterh and others).”
The powers of this government would also be limited, since it would not be able to vote on texts relating to community matters which, although few in number, require a double majority.
In any case, the MR risks not accepting this option. In November, David Leisterh estimated that a “minority government in Brussels (would be) a very dangerous institutional adventure“.
This new evocation by Ahmed Laaouej, however, owes nothing to chance. This track of a government “transitional and emergency” has been discussed for several weeks in the corridors of the Brussels PS.
This approach was also supported by Défi, during discussions between party presidents.
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