Pro-solidarity 'Pact for Belgium' continues to gain support

B Plus, a group that campaigns against separatism and for a "modern, federal and united" Belgium, has announced that it has passed the 100-signatory mark for its "Pact for Belgium," a text already supported by the majority of the main political parties. The nationalist New Flemish Alliance and right-wing Vlaams Belang party have rejected the text.

According to B Plus, the signatories are all "personalities from the economic world, intellectuals from the right and the left, journalists, and actors from the culture and health sectors." New political figures, such as the state secretary for recovery, Thomas Dermine, have also voiced their support.

"A federalism of cooperation with strong Regions can work,” Thomas Dermine wrote on Twitter. “This has been demonstrated with the recovery plan."

Belgium's recovery plan required complete agreement on the distribution of the European funds made available to each member state to revive the post-Covid economy and make it more resilient. The projects that each entity wanted to finance with this money then had to be presented in a national recovery plan, which allowed Belgium to receive a pre-financing of €770 million (13% of the total).

The "Pact for Belgium" sets out a dozen principles, from simplifying the structure of the State to better collaboration between federated bodies. "The federal authority must be given the means to act in the common interest when the federated bodies are not able to do so because of a divergence of interests," said B Plus in a statement.