Alexander De Croo

Alexander De Croo is a Belgian politician and businessman who has served as the prime minister of Belgium since October 2020.

De Croo was born in Vilvoorde, Flemish Brabant, and studied business engineering at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel before attaining an MBA at Northwestern University in the United States. He worked for Boston Consulting Group before starting his own company, Darts-ip, in 2006. De Croo became involved with the Belgian political party Open Vlaamse Liberalen en Democraten (Open VLD), of which he was chairman from 2009 to 2012. From 2012 to 2020, De Croo served in the governments of Elio Di Rupo, Charles Michel, and Sophie Wilmès as a deputy prime minister of Belgium.

During his tenure as deputy prime minister he served as the Minister of Pensions from 2012 to 2014, as Minister of Development Cooperation from 2014 to 2020, and as Minister of Finance from 2018 to 2020. On 1 October 2020, over a year after the 2019 federal elections, the De Croo Government was formed to replace Wilmès' minority government, with De Croo as prime minister.

Early political career :

In 2009, De Croo participated for the first time in politics, standing in the 2009 European elections. He received more than 47,000 votes. On 26 October, De Croo became a candidate for the presidency of his political party, Open Flemish Liberals and Democrats (Open VLD), to succeed the transitional party president, Guy Verhofstadt. He chose Vincent Van Quickenborne and Patricia Ceysens as his running mates to compete against Marino Keulen and Gwendolyn Rutten. On 12 December, he was elected president in the second round with 11,676 votes; Marino Keulen received 9,614 votes. His election was considered remarkable as he had almost no previous experience as a politician.

Prime Minister :

On 23 September 2020, Alexander De Croo and Paul Magnette (PS) were appointed by the King to form a government. On 30 September 2020, it was announced that De Croo would take over the position of prime minister, succeeding Wilmès. 

The formation of the Belgian government (Vivaldi) took a considerable amount of time. The book De doodgravers van België by Wouter Verschelden states that the main reason for the prolonged negotiations was a scandal about communication between De Croo and an Italian pornographic film actress.In August 2021, Corriere della Sera quoted statements by the implicated actress, claiming that De Croo had messaged her seeking a meeting and that they had not met, but had continued to exchange messages.

De Croo's government has a higher proportion of women ministers than any previous Belgian government: half of the ministers are women. 

In June 2021, he visited the site of the Antwerp building collapse with King Philippe of Belgium and spoke with emergency workers.

In February 2022, the government adopted a law to make the labour market more flexible: employees will have the possibility, provided that their company agrees, of switching to a four-day week. In return, their working days will be extended to 9.5 hours (corresponding to a 38-hour week). The law also makes working hours between 8 p.m. and midnight more flexible, as they will no longer be considered as night work and will not entitle employees to any compensation. 

The government wants to increase military spending to 2 per cent of GDP in order to comply with the demands of NATO and the U.S. government, which is causing tension within its coalition. The right-wing supports the plan, but the ecologists are opposed, arguing that the government should have other priorities than the military, while the socialists remain undecided.

On 26 November 2022, De Croo and foreign minister Hadja Lahbib visited Ukraine, meeting president of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelenskyy and pledging continued Belgian support to Ukraine.