Flemish Liberals and Democrats
The Vlaamse Liberalen en Democraten (Flemish Liberals and Democrats) is a liberal flemish party, created in 1992 from the former PVV and a few other politicians from other parties.Well known members include:
- Federal prime Minister Guy Verhofstadt
- (Former) Party leader Karel De Gucht (temporarily replaced by Dirk Sterckx)
- Prime minister of Flanders Bart Somers
Idealogically, the VLD started as a somewhat Tachterite right-wing party under its founder, Guy Verhofstadt. However, the VLD rapidly became a more main-stream party, endorsing the solidarity principle that is one of the corner-stones of the continental West-European states. From 2000 to 2004, under de second period of participation in the Belgian government and under belgian prime-minister Guy Verhofstadt, the VLD lost most of it's ideologic appeal. Several of its thinkers as prof. Boudewijn Bouckaert, president of Nova Civitas heavily criticised this. Many other resent it's priority for the 'belgian compromise', whereby the Walloon socialist PS ended up ideologically and financially dominating Belgian policy.
Telling: in 2003, Belgium was the only OECD-member that saw its global taxation level rise. At the same time, labour charges were already at the highest level of all modern countries. Obviously, not en enviable position for a liberal partner in the government.