The federal government will announce five articles of the constitution that are subject to review in 2024. Article 195, to unlock the entire constitution, and Article 96, which should be used to enforce a period on government formation, is also part of that list.
Long governmental negotiations are almost part of our cultural heritage. With 541 days of De Robo’s government, the world record remains in our country’s name. The current Purple Green Alliance has also taken 493 days since the election began.
The federal government wants to change this. It intends to declare Article 96 of the Constitution subject to review at the end of the legislature. This is what he writes in La Libre Belgique. Article 96 requires the king to appoint and dismiss ministers, and is thus an important principle for government formation.
The de Crow government wants to add a clause with a term by which the coalition should be formed. If the negotiations exceed that period, there will be a discussion about the composition in the House of Representatives. For example, the debate will not take place in the back rooms under the supervision of the party leaders, as the current government argues, but overtly. However, the deadline for negotiators to take into account is yet to come.
Article 195
In addition, Parliament will declare Article 195 subject to review in 2024. After that year’s elections, the two parties will negotiate the country’s seventh reform. If they also want to amend other articles of the constitution at that time, they can only do so if they have already declared that they are subject to review before the election.
Article 195 tightly regulates this procedure. But if Parliament opens and amends that article, it can still amend articles that were not covered for review. For example, after 2024, all options for making changes to other articles during negotiations on reform of the seventh country will remain open.
half an hour
However, the opposition N-VA is upset that the list contains only five articles. According to MP Sander Lones, the government could have done the job in half an hour, while it took five months.
In addition, the relevant constitutional articles to review the role of the Senate or the number of MPs were not included in the list, despite promises made in the coalition agreement, Lones notes.
The N-VA has already submitted its “comprehensive list” of constitutional articles to the Parliamentary Committee on Constitution, it seems. The government is said to add, after widespread debate among citizens, to the list of five later this year.
