Belgium’s knotty politics gives EU’s recovery fund its trickiest test yet

Belgium's notoriously messy political system is giving the EU a real headache in the way it doles out recovery fund cash.

In a story that embraces accusations of blackmail, a Flemish liberal prime minister, a French-speaking Socialist pensions minister, the mayor of an old industrial city and a workers' party that's not even in government, the country is at serious risk of missing out on €4.5 billion in EU grants.

At the heart of the matter is the decades-old question of how much the EU should try to influence national policies in its 27 members. The bloc's €800 billion joint-debt post-pandemic fund is based on a simple trade: cash in exchange for reforms. But when that difficult balance of carrot and stick clashes with thorny domestic politics, it can backfire.