Yves Camille Désiré Leterme
( ) (born 6 October 1960) is a Belgian
politician,
a leader of the Christian Democratic and Flemish party (CD&V) and the current Belgian Prime
Minister.
Leterm was the
Prime Minister
of Belgium from March 2008 to December 2008.
He has formerly been
Minister of Foreign Affairs, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of
Budget, Institutional Reforms, Transport and the North Sea
in the Belgian federal
government. He is also a former
Minister-President of
Flanders and Flemish Minister of
Agriculture and Fisheries. Despite his
French name, Leterme is
Flemish. He is fluent in both
Dutch and
French.
On 14 July 2008, facing the imminent failure to meet a self imposed
deadline to enact "constitutional reform" consisting of further
devolution of powers to the nation's three linguistic communities,
Leterme tendered his resignation to
King Albert II, the head of state. On
17 July, King Albert, after holding a flurry of consultations with
leaders of political parties, labor unions, and the employers'
association, rejected Leterme's resignation. Instead, the king
appointed a three person commission of representatives of the
linguistic communities to investigate how to restart the reform
process. The commission was to report to the king by 31 July
2008.
On 19 December 2008 he offered his resignation to
King Albert II after a crisis
surrounding the sale of
Fortis to
BNP Paribas. On 22 December 2008
King Albert II accepted his
resignation, along with that of his entire government. He remained
Prime Minister until 30 December, when
Herman Van Rompuy was appointed as his
successor.
On 24 November 2009, it was announced that Leterme will once again
become Prime Minister, succeeding Van Rompuy, the first
President-elect of the
European Council.
Personal life
Leterme
was born in the city of Wervik
in the
province of West
Flanders
.
He studied
law at the Catholic University of Leuven
where he received a LL.B. degree in 1981. He then studied at
Ghent
University
where he
subsequently obtained a B.Sc.
degree in Political Science (1983), a LL.M. degree (1984), and a MPA degree in
1985.
Career
Before entering national politics, Leterme served as an auditor at
the country's
Court of
Audit (
Dutch:
Rekenhof,
French:
Cour des Comptes).
He then became adjunct and then national secretary of the
CVP until he resigned to become a civil servant
with the
European Union.
In 1997 he went on
indefinite leave from that position when he was appointed Member of
the Belgian
Parliament
. He has been a member of the city council of
Ypres
since 1995. He served as
alderman of Ypres from 1995 to 2001.
He was appointed to the
House of
Representatives in 1997, elected in 1999 and 2003. After the
defeat of the
CD&V in the
general elections of 2003, he
succeeded
Stefaan De Clerck as
party chairman. In 2004 Yves Leterme became Minister-President of
the Flemish government. Flanders has fared well during his term in
office. Yves Leterme took a pragmatic course of increasing the
economic dynamic and social wellbeing in Flanders. He has made the
Flemish government into the ‘investment government’, focusing the
investments on the infrastructure and logistics with respect to
both the business climate and social wellbeing (notably Flanders
Port Area, homes for the elderly, child care, and immigrant
integration). In order to accelerate investment he has successfully
encouraged the use of the PPP structures. Additionally, Yves
Leterme’s government implemented rigorous budgeting – his
government started with a sizeable implicit debt in Flanders which
has been reduced to zero as the result of his policies.
In the elections held on 10 June 2007, Leterme received 796,521
personal votes, leading his party to a landslide victory. This was
the second highest amount of personal votes ever in Belgium’s
national elections. On 21 December 2007, he became Vice-Prime
Minister of Belgium and Minister of Budget, Transport,
Institutional Reform and the North Sea. On 23 March, Leterme
received confidence of the chamber as Prime Minister.
Controversies
Many French-speaking journalists take offence at Leterme's
political opinions on the (in Flanders) widely supported demand for
more Flemish autonomy. They consistently decry him for making
provocative or erroneous statements.
During an interview with the French newspaper
Libération in August 2006, Leterme, who
is himself bilingual and the son of a
French-speaking father, made a remark about
the overall failure and refusal of French-speaking inhabitants to
learn and use Dutch in certain municipalities, more specifically in
municipalities
with language facilities.
Most prominent Francophone politicians such as
Elio Di Rupo and
Isabelle Durant along with some Flemish
politicians such as
Pascal Smet and
Guy Vanhengel objected to this remark.
In the Flemish daily
De Standaard of 28
August Leterme explained his words: "I am allowed to ask myself the
question whether the lack of knowledge of Dutch is a matter of not
wanting or not being able to."
A news report produced by the Belgian Francophone television
company
RTBF alleged that Leterme said in the
Flemish parliament: "I don't need the King". According to Flemish
newspapers, this sentence was taken out of context, because Leterme
was talking about the creation of Flemish statutes (decrees):
legislation approved by the Flemish parliament, unlike federal
legislation, does not need the king's signature in order to become
law. The Flemish Minister-President signs the decrees
himself.
On one occasion, Leterme quipped that the only things common to all
Belgians are "the King, the football team, some beers...". Upon
being asked by a television journalist to name which event is
commemorated by Belgium's national day (21 July), Leterme wrongly
replied that it was the proclamation of the constitution, when the
correct answer is the coronation of the nation's first King,
Leopold I of Belgium.
Subsequently, he was asked if he knew the French version of the
Belgian national anthem, "
the
Brabançonne," whereupon he began to sing the French national
anthem.
Leterme caused controversy again in a December 2007 interview with
the Concentra newspapers by denouncing Belgium's Francophone public
broadcast network, the RTBF, for having its own political agenda,
being a propagandist for CDH politician
Joëlle Milquet, and being a relic of the
past.
Leterme further compared the broadcaster to
Radio Mille
Collines, which was a Rwandan
propaganda
outlet against the Tutsis during the Rwandan Genocide, though he later mentioned
he had only quoted what was said in political circles.
2007 general elections
On 6 May 2007, he officially launched his candidacy for the general
election on 10 June 2007, leading his party's list of candidates.
On election day, he received about 800,000 preferential votes,
which is the second largest number of votes ever gained in the
history of Belgian elections. This was one of the greatest monster
tallies in recent Belgian history (the previous comparable score
was obtained by
Leo Tindemans).
Based on this personal tally, on the successful tally of his party,
and on the general election tallies which saw progress for most
parties making the strongest demands for greater Flemish autonomy,
such as
CD&V,
N-VA
and the new
Lijst Dedecker LDD),
status quo for the left-wing Greens, and regression for the far
right
Vlaams Belang and parties making
only modest demands for greater Flemish autonomy, such as
OpenVLD and
SP.A. Leterme as
formateur convened the negotiations to form a
coalition government, negotiations which would turn out to be
protracted and initially lead to a stalemate.
2007–2008 political stalemate
Yves Leterme was the favourite to become the next
Prime Minister of Belgium
following the
2007
General Election. From 16 July to 23 August 2007, Leterme led
the formal coalition talks into forming a new government. But the
negotiations failed
over constitutional reform and on 23 August he resigned as
formateur.
On 29 September,
Herman Van
Rompuy, "explorer" in the coalition seeking process, presented
his final report to the King. Later that day, King Albert II again
appointed Leterme as
formateur. On 7 November, his party
took the initiative and got the Flemish representatives to vote on
the most crucial aspect of the negotiations, the splitting of the
electoral region of
Brussels-Halle-Vilvoorde, a measure
strongly opposed by the Francophone community.
Leterme again offered his resignation to the King on 1 December,
after coalition talks failed to reach an agreement on several
issues.
An interim government under
Guy
Verhofstadt was sworn in on 21 December 2007. In it, Leterme
became Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of the Budget,
Institutional Reform, and Transport. He was anticipated to become
Prime Minister in a new government in March 2008.
Belgium's political uncertainty further deepened when Yves Leterme
was hospitalised on 14 February 2008. Rumours that he was suffering
from
hepatitis were formally denied by a
spokesman, and it was later disclosed that he had suffered
internal bleeding in the
gastrointestinal tract. His duties as
Minister for Budget and Institutional Reform were temporarily taken
over by
Jo Vandeurzen (
CD&V), the Minister for
Justice.
Prime Minister
On 18 March 2008, an agreement between five parties on the
formation of the new government was announced. Leterme was sworn in
as Prime Minister on 20 March, and his government was approved by
the Chamber of Representatives on 22 March, with 97 votes in
favour, 48 against, and one abstaining.
For Leterme, priority issues were still further devolution of power
to Belgium's regions, which would require amending the national
constitution, and resolving dissatisfaction with the administrative
status of the districts of
Brussels-Halle-Vilvoorde. He set a
deadline of 15 July 2008 to accomplish these goals. The deadline
was not met. On 15 July 2008, King Albert II issued a communiqué
that Leterme had offered his resignation to the king, and that the
king was reserving his decision on whether to accept the
resignation. The next day, the king held consultations with the
leaders of political parties, the employers' association, and
trades unions. By the end of the day, it was still not resolved
whether Leterme would actually be departing from the prime
ministership. Leterme declared, "It appears that the [language]
communities' conflicting visions of how to give a new equilibrium
to our state have become incompatible . . . state reform remains
essential".
Fortis and fall of government
Along with
his counterparts in the Netherlands
and Luxembourg
, Leterme decided to nationalize ailing
financial-services company Fortis. The company was split and
the Belgian government sold the Belgian part to French bank
BNP Paribas. The shareholders, who were
not consulted in the sale, sued the Belgian state. Although at
first the government won, on appeal the
Court of Appeal reversed the
judgement of the lower court and ordered the freezing of the sale.
Following the verdict, First President
Ghislain Londers of the
Court of Cassation indicated
that government officials had tried to influence the judges.
Leterme tendered his resignation and that of his government on 19
December 2008, which was accepted by King Albert II on 22
December.
Minister of Foreign Affairs
With the 17 July 2009 government reshuffle, Leterme succeeded
Karel De Gucht, who became European
Commissioner, as the minister of foreign affairs in the
Van Rompuy I Government.
Foreign relations
Lebanon
On 29
November 2008, President of
Lebanon Michel Sleiman discussed
with visiting Prime Minister Leterme the Lebanese domestic
situation and its foreign relations, particularly its relations
with Syria
.
Vietnam
Yves
Leterme started a two-day visit to Vietnam
Tuesday 11 August 2009 to boost bilateral and
multifaceted cooperation between the two countries. It was
his first official visit to Vietnam since Leterme took up his post
as foreign minister the previous month. Leterme met with Vietnamese
officials to strengthen bilateral relations and cooperation in
several sectors including politics, economics, and trade and
investment, as well as discussed regional and global issues that
are of interest to both sides. Vietnam is currently the only Asian
country receiving preferential development aid from the
Belgian government for the 2007-2010
period, in the amount of 32 million euro (US$45 million). In 2008,
two-way trade reached nearly $1.4 billion and Belgium is now
Vietnam's fourth largest export market among EU countries.
References
External links