N-VA targets ‘workers and entrepreneurs’ in campaign

Prosperity and purchasing power, that seems to be what the election campaign is about. Now that the frame is in place, Bart De Wever wants to make it clear that the N-VA wants to give space to workers and entrepreneurs. That will be the message in his speech at the N-VA conference in Ghent on Sunday.

The campaign is getting off to a slow start. It is not yet alive, even though the voting tests and election guides are popular. Many people don’t seem to know (anymore) who to vote for on June 9. There have not yet been any major discussions in the media that could provide guidance.

The N-VA succeeds in determining the agenda, in contrast to Prime Minister Alexander De Croo (Open VLD), who has difficulty getting into the match. When the N-VA launched the proposal that those who work should always have 500 euros more than those who do not work, the party set the tone, which Open VLD had not achieved when the party had recently made exactly the same proposal.

The N-VA’s choice to base the campaign on Flemish prosperity turned out to be the right one. At Open VLD, which opted for the difficult campaign slogan ‘Make tomorrow work’, it is viewed with envy. It is on that nail that N-VA chairman Bart De Wever will continue to knock. For example, he posted a message from De Tijd on X that Belgium has by far the heaviest labor burden. ‘Time for a thorough reform that makes work pay more net in exchange for a fairer social policy. For Flemish prosperity!’, it sounded, completely according to the script.

It is striking how the N-VA’s discourse has been subtly adjusted, and it is also explicitly stated that the party stands for a ‘more socially just policy’. In the previous election campaign, Vlaams Belang scored by adopting the PS plea for higher minimum pensions and opposing the cold and callous restructuring story of the N-VA. Now De Wever and PS chairman Paul Magnette find each other in standing up for the lower middle class, while for the rest they each live on a different planet, as became clear from a double interview in De Tijd.

The N-VA may be putting more emphasis on its social side, but De Wever does not seem to be succeeding in presenting a compelling story. The strength of the N-VA was that it was a supply party, but what is that supply today? A two-year business cabinet with De Wever as Prime Minister, with a confederal dream that no one sees how it can become reality, that’s about it.

Perhaps even more problematic is that De Wever is still finding it difficult to convince with his plea for more Flanders. ‘What we do ourselves, we do better’ has completely evaporated after two legislatures with the N-VA at the helm of the Flemish government. Wrong strategic choices have been made, such as using the nitrogen problem as a weapon to push CD&V under. It blew up in the face of Flemish Prime Minister Jan Jambon and the N-VA. De Wever and his advanced pawn Zuhal Demir have lost the countryside.

According to insiders, the Flemish government would have liked it if the Flemish Parliament was not a legislative parliament and elections could be called early.

The parallel is drawn with the fall of the federal Michel government over the Marrakesh Pact in 2018, under the impetus of then State Secretary for Asylum and Migration Theo Francken (N-VA). The result was that not socio-economic policy, but the migration file came top of the agenda in the election campaign. The N-VA revived Vlaams Belang.

De Wever does not want to make that mistake again: that is why he did not follow Francken’s strategy to bring voters back to Vlaams Belang. Then the N-VA should have positioned itself more right-wing than Vlaams Belang. A mission impossible, because the original is always better than the copy. De Wever aimed at the centrist voters and wanted to push CD&V and Open VLD under their feet.

The fact that this election campaign is all about purchasing power and Flemish prosperity fits in with the line set out by De Wever, to the frustration of Vlaams Belang chairman Tom Van Grieken, who asks himself in despair: ‘Where is migration?’ Although Francken seems to be doing his best to get that theme back on the agenda with his proposal to lock up undocumented detainees in Kosovo. His opposition to State Secretary Nicole de Moor’s (CD&V) bill on a persistent return policy also brings migration to the fore again.

It does not fit in with De Wever’s structure. As former Vooruit chairman Conner Rousseau made clear in his speech in Amsterdam, De Wever first wanted to get the frame right: ‘First you need to set the scene’. Now that Flemish prosperity and purchasing power form the context of this election campaign, De Wever wants to increasingly emphasize how the N-VA wants to encourage work and entrepreneurship. That will be the central message at the conference in Ghent on Sunday.