Belgium's prime minister spent the weekend looking for €10 billion. At 9:30 Monday morning he went to the palace to tell the king he'd found a resignation letter instead.
I've covered a lot of budget crises. This is the first one where the country's emergency plan was a man in a crown.
Here's what's real, per Politico Europe, Reuters, VRT and Euronews. Prime Minister Bart De Wever's five-party coalition met all weekend to close a €10 billion budget gap. Talks broke up early Monday with no deal. De Wever then went to King Philippe to offer his resignation. Reuters reports the king could instead send everyone back to the table.
So Belgium's government didn't fall. It's on hold, like a customer service call.
Euronews reports the coalition, nicknamed "Arizona," took 234 days to form. That's eight months of negotiating to build a team that then couldn't agree on a budget in two.
The fight itself is the oldest one in Europe. Per VRT, the Flemish socialists of Vooruit, plus CD&V and Les Engagés, want more money from people with the "strongest shoulders." De Wever's N-VA and the liberal MR want spending cuts instead, including in healthcare, per Reuters. One side wants to raise taxes on the rich. The other side wants to cut. Nobody suggested the third option, which is stop being Belgium about it.
The deputy prime minister for MR, David Clarinval, told reporters there were still "far too many taxes on the table," per Politico. Foreign Minister Maxime Prévot said listing all the sticking points would take "an eternity," per Euronews. That's the first honest budget forecast this government has produced.
Belgium ran a deficit of 5.2% of GDP in 2025, per Politico. EU rules allow 3%. Euronews puts the national debt at over €735 billion, more than 110% of GDP, where the EU allows 60%. Belgium is the country that hosts the European Union, and it is missing the European Union's rules by roughly double. It's the landlord who fails his own building inspection.
And while the parties argued, Reuters and Euronews report that interest rates on Belgian government bonds went up. De Wever has warned for months about an "interest snowball," where the country borrows just to pay interest on what it already borrowed. Belgium spent the weekend arguing about how to stop the snowball, and the snowball spent the weekend rolling.
The same thing happened last November, per VRT. Same coalition, same €10 billion hunt, same trip to the king. Last year he asked for an extension and the king gave him 50 extra days. This year he brought a resignation. That's not a government. That's a seasonal tradition, like the Christmas market, but with fewer sausages and more debt.
On the sewer scale, I give Belgium three rats out of five. One rat for needing 234 days to form a government that can't do the one job governments have. One rat for losing the same €10 billion two Novembers in a row. One rat for walking the problem over to a king.
De Wever went looking for €10 billion. He came back with a resignation, which is the only thing in Brussels that costs nothing.
And here's your bill: regular gas averaged $4.17 a gallon on Nov. 2, per AAA, up from $3.04 a year ago, and nobody here gets to hand that receipt to a king.
This article is satire. The Demorat is a parody news site; real facts are drawn from the linked sources, and jokes, invented scenes, and fictional characters are not real.
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