Belgium’s newly appointed Prime Minister, Bart De Wever, outlined his government’s priorities in parliament on Tuesday (February 4), emphasizing stricter migration policies.

The Belgium government aims to tighten migration controls, particularly on family reunification.

"To organize a more orderly and humane migration policy, it must be much stricter," De Wever said.

Belgium received 39,615 asylum applications in 2024, an 11.6 percent increase from the previous year, while the country’s reception capacity of just over 36,200 places remained nearly full throughout the year.

According to the European Union's statistical data, Eurostat, as of January 1, 2023, third-country nationals in Belgium accounted for about 5.2 percent of the total population. The next update is due in March 2025. In addition, as of March 2024, Belgium counted around 77, 645 non-EU citizens who fled the war in Ukraine and had received a special EU-wide temporary protection in the country.

In 2022, the Commissioner General for Refugees and Stateless Persons (CGRS), stated that 11,061 applicants were granted refugee status (41,1 percent) or were beneficiaries of subsidiary protection status (1,9 percent). At that time, Belgium had a general rate of recognition of 43 percent of all applicants. The main nationalities of beneficiaries of international protection for that year were Syrian, Afghan, Eritrean and Palestinian.

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Belgium shifts to the right

De Wever was sworn in as Belgium’s new prime minister on February 3 after securing a coalition deal that shifts the country’s political direction to the right.

The agreement, reached after seven months of negotiations, makes De Wever the first nationalist from Dutch-speaking Flanders to hold the position.

De Wever, a right-wing Flemish nationalist, has also previously been critical of the country’s French-speaking southern region but struck a more conciliatory tone on Tuesday, beginning his address in French instead of Dutch.

A proponent of law-and-order policies, De Wever has pledged to enforce stricter measures on irregular migration, reflecting a broader rightward trend in European politics. The 54-year-old, who has softened his stance on Flemish independence in recent years, took the oath of office before King Philippe at the royal palace in Brussels.

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On the European stage

De Wever, leader of the Flemish nationalist N-VA party, succeeds Alexander De Croo, who has served as caretaker prime minister since last year’s June elections. On his first day in office, he attended a European Union summit in Brussels.

"We will have a government that will clean up the budget, implement a fair social policy, reward work, implement the strictest migration policy ever…and invest in safety," N-VA said in a statement. De Wever also believes that citizens should be encouraged to get employment instead of relying on welfare benefits.

De Wever’s N-VA party is part of the hard-right European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR) group in the European Parliament, which includes members from the parties of Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni and Czech leader Petr Fiala.

"Our ECR group now has three prime ministers at the European Council table and participates in the government of seven countries," French hard-right lawmaker Marion Marechal, part of the Le Pen family, wrote on the social media platform X.

Hard-right parties, often riding anti-immigrant sentiment, performed strongly in European Parliament elections last year, and have topped recent national and regional votes in Austria, Germany and the Netherlands.

With Reuters, AP and dpa