(Hungarian Conservative. Tamás Gyurkovits).
laams Belang (Flemish Interest), which strives for Flemish independence, is currently Belgium’s most popular party. However, according to Tom van Grieken, the leader of the party, it is not enough to win the opinion polls. He wants to win the elections. In an interview with Hungarian Conservative, the 37-year-old chairman said that if they reach 50 per cent of the vote together with other Flemish nationalist parties in the upcoming elections, they will put the issue of independence on the table and give the voters what they have longed for: an anti-migration and family-friendly policy.
On 9 June Belgium will hold federal and regional parliamentary elections simultaneously with the European Parliament elections. Tom van Grieken’s nationalist, anti-globalist, anti-immigration party, Vlaams Belang, is miles ahead of all other parties with less than a month to go before a general election, according to current opinion polls, and has become the largest party in Flanders, the wealthiest and most populous region, with polls showing it has at least 26–27 per cent of the Flemish vote. On a federal level, Vlaams Belang is not part of the seven-party Belgian government. Tom van Grieken, with whom we had the opportunity to talk at CPAC Hungary in Budapest, told Hungarian Conservative: the biggest problem is that while the Flemish people represent about 60 per cent of the Belgian population and pay 70 per cent of taxes, their voice is barely heard, so they don’t even have the opportunity to change the system that defines their everyday life.