The Flemish nationalists gathered on Saturday evening with 4,000 to 5,000 members in the Nekkerhal in Mechelen for their New Year’s party. In his traditional speech, De Wever praised his fellow party members in the Flemish government. They are not giving in to popular demands to hand out more money, he said. “If policy remains unchanged, Flanders will return to a balanced budget. Flanders can thus stand alongside the Netherlands, Germany and the Scandinavian countries.”
That is in stark contrast to the Vivaldi government, a federal government in which the influence of the French-speaking left has never been greater, it said. “No reforms and a fake budget with the largest deficit in the entire EU. Belgium can no longer even stand next to the southern European countries. After De Croo, the deluge”, says DeWever. “Never with us. We don’t do politics just to let our top people have a good career.”
This set the tone for the rest of the speech. “We are the budget red lantern of Europe, while we pay the highest tax burden on labor in the world. They are fools who work, and those fools are the Flemings.” According to De Wever, Vivaldi cannot present any nice results in other areas either. Whether it concerns the fight once morest organized crime, energy policy or migration, the federal government cannot achieve success anywhere, says De Wever.
Vivaldi II
It is immediately crucial for De Wever that the Flemish voter breaks through the status quo in 2024. “Not by giving a useless voice to the extremes, that is the shortest way to Vivaldi II and the end of Flemish prosperity,” said the N-VA chairman.
In contrast, he profiles his party as one “that steadfastly defends its principles, a party that will not bend in exchange for a miserable premiership, a party that stands for the only workable model to secure our Flemish prosperity.” In doing so, he repeated his plea for confederalism, in which powers are transferred to the federated states and they jointly agree on what is still happening at the federal level.
The story of Flanders
De Wever also referred to the fuss around in his speech The story of Flanders. That TV program by Tom Waes looks back on Flemish history, but was already criticized before the first episode because it might count on various subsidies from Flanders. It was immediately suggested that this would help to instrumentalize that history.
“Let’s be clear: we still believe in the importance of a real and close-knit community. A warm Flemish nest in which we are brought up according to shared norms and values and in which we all contribute to the story of Flanders together,” said De Wever.
He complained that according to the left, this story should not exist. “And if it exists at all, then it is a pitch black story that we should be ashamed of. If there were a European self-destruction championship, the Flemish left won it with fingers in the nose. They don’t want us to have a past and they want to deny Flanders the future in this way,” said De Wever.
Peasant protest
While the N-VA members celebrated their New Year’s party, farmers protested at the entrance. The farmers had come to the event with columns of tractors – reportedly regarding 150 tractors – to campaign once morest the nitrogen agreement. Kop van Jut was Minister of the Environment Zuhal Demir.
“An N-VA party takes place here, but for us farmers and the rest of the population there is no reason to party,” said Gunter Klaasen from the Turnhout Vennen area. “They are jeopardizing food security and making the future of agriculture very uncertain. According to the current Programmatic Approach to Nitrogen (PAS), almost nothing will be relicensed.”
For Klaasen, Flemish minister Demir is responsible for the PAS. This should reduce nitrogen in Flanders, but threatens to have serious consequences for the agricultural sector. During his speech, N-VA chairman Bart De Wever had just praised Demir’s approach. “Thanks to the nitrogen agreement, we can avoid a total licensing drama such as in the Netherlands. It is up to us to explain this to Flemish farmers and to offer them guarantees for the future. Because lies are of no use to them,” it said.