Belgium’s federal Prime Minister, Bart De Wever, is not your average European leader. A conservative intellectual with a sharp tongue and a taste for historical analogy, he is perhaps the only European statesman to cite Edmund Burke more readily than Brussels regulations. A long-serving mayor of Antwerp – one of Europe’s great port cities – and leader of the moderate nationalist New Flemish Alliance (N-VA), De Wever stitched together a national coalition after topping the 2024 federal elections.

The alliance includes both centre-right and centre-left parties, drawn from both of Belgium’s major linguistic blocs – no small feat in a country that barely speaks to itself. De Wever brings to the job a sardonic sense of humour, a historian’s depth, and a coalition-builder’s patience. Now, he’s

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