Belgium’s PM resigns amid row over UN immigration pact

Belgian Prime Minister Charles Michel has handed in his resignation after the largest party in his coalition government quit over a UN migration agreement.

Michel said he had no choice but to step down after the opposition Socialist Party proposed a no-confidence vote against his administration, The Guardian reports.

The PM had asked opposition parties to call off the no-confidence bid and allow his government to keep working until legislative elections in May next year, in order to avoid what he called “stagnation for the whole of 2019”, reports The Daily Telegraph.

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But Michel said that the opposition’s decision to proceed meant he had to quit - potentially leaving Belgium facing a snap election as early as next month. “My call did not convince. It was not heard,” he said. “I have decided to resign and go to the king immediately.”

Under Belgian law, the ruling monarch has the power to reject a PM’s resignation, and it is not clear whether the country’s King Philippe will accept Michel’s departure. In a post on Twitter, the Royal Palace said the king had received him and was “withholding his decision” about what steps to take next.

Michel has led a four-party coalition government in Belgium since 2014. However, on 9 December he was left at the helm of a minority government after the nationalist New Flemish Alliance (N-VA) party quit the coalition over Michel’s decision to support a controversial UN accord on migration.

The deal, known as the Global Compact for Migration (GCM), aims to better manage migration at local, national, regional and global levels, reducing the risks that migrants or refugees face during their journeys.

The plan has been praised by world leaders including German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who said it would help facilitate the “natural phenomenon” of migration.

But the BBC notes that critics “believe it will lead to increased immigration to the Continent”. Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz claimed in October that the pact would “blur of the lines between legal and illegal migration”.

In Belgium, the N-VA also opposed the GCM in a “widely criticised social media campaign” launched earlier this year that featured “pictures of Muslim women with their faces covered”, and that claimed the accord was focused on “allowing migrants to retain the cultural practices of their homelands”, Al Jazeera reports.

Although 164 countries have backed the deal, nations including the US, Australia, Hungary, Poland, Switzerland and Austria are among those who have refused.

The pact was signed in conjunction with a Global Compact on Refugees (GCR) that aims to provide similar improvements to the processing of refugees. The US and Hungary were the only two nations that voted against the GCR.