WGA 2020 | Belgium | Introduction

Introduction

Question:
Briefly reflect about when and why a WGA has/hasn’t been introduced in your country. In what ways does a WGA in your country reflect the country’s specificities (e.g. in relation to its institutional and constitutional set-up)?

Belgium Expert

Alain Spoiden

Honorary Colonel, Counsellor, Public Centre for Social Welfare, Aubange

Alain Spoiden is Honorary Colonel (General Staff) and a former officer in the Belgian Army. He currently is a Counsellor within the Public Centre for Social Welfare in Aubange, Belgium. As a junior officer, he was Battery Commander within an Air Defence Artillery battalion in Germany. After the fall of the Berlin Wall, he held various staff positions in the General Intelligence and Security Service in Brussels, joined the Eurocorps HQ in Strasbourg, and was deployed to Pristina, Kosovo, within NATO’s KFOR 3 HQ. After that experience, he was appointed Director of Scientific Research at the Centre of Defence Studies and, later, as Director of the High Defence Studies of the Royal High Institute for Defence (RHID) in Brussels. He was posted as an Intelligence Officer for the UN Strategic Military Cell in New York. Alain ended his career as Military Adviser helping to prepare for Belgium’s EU presidency (2010) and, afterwards, at the Belgian Military Representation to the EU in Brussels. He served in the Army Reserve after his retirement as Faculty Adviser at the RHID.

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Today’s world has become increasingly complex, and challenges can be political, military, social, environmental, economic or security related. In facing such a situation, governments are more and more obliged to develop means to make their foreign policies more efficient. Belgium is a complex institutional country in which political responsibilities are spread across the federal, regional and community levels. Furthermore, as elsewhere, the Belgian political system is one of coalition governments in which the governing parties very often have their own political agendas.

For decades, the Belgian government has been confronted with external conflicts and crises. Belgium’s ministries of Foreign Affairs and Defence as well as the Development Cooperation Directorate of the former regularly cooperate as part of a so-called ‘3D’ (defence-development-diplomacy) approach. Since the Ministry of Justice (law) and the Ministry of the Interior (order) are sometimes also involved, a so-called ‘3DLO’ concept has been elaborated.

These federal bodies have traditionally worked together well despite sometimes have conflicting national agendas. However, there was an acknowledgement that there was a need for aligning policy options and instruments spread across the different levels of government. At present, Belgium is formulating a so-called ‘Comprehensive Approach’ that takes inspiration from a number of instruments embodying a whole-of-government approach (WGA) (as discussed in greater detail below). In 2017, Belgium’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs initiated a Strategy Note on a Comprehensive Approach, which determines a framework agreed at the inter-ministerial (or inter-depart mental) level with the aim of “jointly identifying, where possible, overarching priorities and increasing the coherence and effectiveness of [Belgian] foreign policy” (Kingdom of Belgium 2017: 2). The note also stresses that the strategy is meant to be “a framework and methodology for foreign policy in the broadest sense” as well as “a working method and not an end in itself” (ibid.) It was approved by the Council of Minister on 20 July 2017.

Belgium Report