Di Rupo was received at the royal palace in Laken on Monday, 4 July, where he laid out his proposals. He then passed his 100-page “note” to the eight other parties in the negotiations, before announcing them to press and public late on Monday afternoon.

The other parties, who will use Di Rupo’s note as the basis for negotiations, are expected to take two or three days to study the document, sure in the knowledge that a failure to reach an agreement at this stage – 386 days after the election – risks bringing them once more in front of the voters.

Di Rupo’s main areas of reform:
On the economy, Di Rupo has a plan to save €22 billion by 2015, with the aim of achieving “a responsible federal budget that will keep the country out of the hands of speculators”. The plan accounts for savings in three roughly equal categories: cuts in spending, including a plan to limit growth in healthcare spending; increases in income, including a tax on speculative investments and a cut in the tax relief companies can claim on certain kinds of interest payments; and an anti-fraud plan to ensure the treasury gets more of the money owed to it.

On the troubled issue of state reform, Di Rupo proposes splitting the electoral district of Brussels- Halle-Vilvoorde into three parts and allowing French-speaking residents of the six municipalities with special rights for French speakers to vote for either the Flemish list for Brabant or the bilingual Brussels list. Brussels region would also be given more power over areas like tourism, mobility and security. The other regions would also be given more autonomy over certain areas, though a complex new proposal for the financing of regional budgets is likely to be a sticking point in the negotiations.

In the socio-economic area, Di Rupo (pictured) tackles pensions and benefits, with unemployment benefits rising slightly for the first three months, then figured according to the number of years worked, before finally after six months falling to below the level they are now. The unemployed will also find it more difficult to turn down a job offer. This is just one of the areas Di Rupo hinted at, prior to revealing his proposals, that would “be difficult for his own party to swallow”.

Whether or not the legal retirement age goes up, the possibility of taking early retirement will become more difficult, being restricted to those who have worked a minimum of 35 years. The note also contained proposals on health-care costs, energy policy, asylum, migration and justice.