2023-06-23 12:49:00
It’s a surreal scene that unfolded Wednesday evening at the end of a meeting of the federal government’s inner cabinet (kern). While the day had taken place in a very tense atmosphere, following the affair of the Belgian visas granted by Hadja Lahbib to an Iranian and Russian delegation, two ministers came to blows at the end of the kern.
Indeed, according to the Business AM website, Frank Vandenbroucke (Vooruit) physically attacked Vincent Van Quickenborne (Open VLD), because the latter got up to leave the meeting. The Minister of Health apparently wanted to raise one more point (the limitation of extra fees for radiologists) before everyone left the room, and he did not appreciate his Liberal colleague pretending to go. “Suddenly Vandenbroucke literally grabbed Van Quickenborne and held him furiously, like in a fistfight. Van Quickenborne was surprised, he tried to get away. The others were stunned and the Prime Minister had to intervene. It was unreal”, told our Flemish colleagues a participant in the meeting, preferring, like the other witnesses of the scene, to remain anonymous. “We were speechless,” said a deputy prime minister.
If Vooruit minimizes the altercation by saying that Frank Vandenbroucke only “put his arm” once morest the Minister of Justice, most of the other testimonies evoked “a very physical contact” and a Minister of Health “unleashed”. And some claimed that this was not the first time that this kind of “crisis” had taken place: according to a “highly placed source”, “Vandenbroucke is acting like this with all members of the kern. On small questions, he oversteps the mark and behaves really badly. He behaves in a transgressive way”.
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