{"id":2857,"date":"2026-02-21T13:46:14","date_gmt":"2026-02-21T13:46:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/2857\/"},"modified":"2026-02-21T13:46:14","modified_gmt":"2026-02-21T13:46:14","slug":"john-downing-how-brussels-used-vatican-tactics-to-break-20-month-political-deadlock","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/2857\/","title":{"rendered":"John Downing: How Brussels used Vatican tactics to break 20-month political deadlock"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"indo-ebe0ecc6_root indo-ebe0ecc6_paragraph indo-91174671_secondary indo-1d70522a_marginbottom4 indo-1d70522a_marginleft0 indo-1d70522a_marginright0 indo-1d70522a_margintop4\" style=\"color:var(--color-primary-80)\" data-testid=\"title-summary\">The Belgian capital had a conclave to form a seven-party coalition, but it might take a miracle to keep it together\n<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"Belgian prime minister Bart De Wever has said he will judge the deal on whether it can fix Brussels' finances. Photo: Getty\" src=\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/3dd0112b-8067-4073-a837-aebc4fa787f4.jpg\" loading=\"eager\" width=\"100%\" data-testid=\"article-image\"  \/><\/p>\n<p class=\"indo-ebe0ecc6_root indo-ebe0ecc6_caption1 indo-300db776_none indo-91174671_secondary indo-66f0fec7_regular indo-1d70522a_marginbottom0 indo-1d70522a_marginleft0 indo-1d70522a_marginright0 indo-1d70522a_margintop3 indo-b48c4984_left\" style=\"color:var(--color-grey-60)\">Belgian prime minister Bart De Wever has said he will judge the deal on whether it can fix Brussels&#8217; finances. Photo: Getty<\/p>\n<p class=\"indo-ebe0ecc6_root indo-ebe0ecc6_paragraph indo-300db776_none indo-91174671_primary indo-1d70522a_marginbottom0 indo-1d70522a_margintop0 indo-b48c4984_inherit\" style=\"color:var(--color-primary-80)\">After 613 days of political deadlock left the de facto EU capital without a regional government, Brussels politicians took a leaf from the Vatican playbook on papal elections.<\/p>\n<p class=\"indo-ebe0ecc6_root indo-ebe0ecc6_paragraph indo-300db776_none indo-91174671_primary indo-1d70522a_marginbottom0 indo-1d70522a_margintop0 indo-b48c4984_inherit\" style=\"color:var(--color-primary-80)\">The various parties went into conclave and, like the cardinals choosing a Pope in Rome, agreed not to come out without a result.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Belgian capital had a conclave to form a seven-party coalition, but it might take a miracle to&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2858,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[7,18,89,2438],"class_list":{"0":"post-2857","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-brussels","8":"tag-belgium","9":"tag-brussels","10":"tag-eu","11":"tag-john-downing"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2857","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2857"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2857\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2858"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2857"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2857"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2857"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}