In the early nineteen-nineties, Clean Hands effectively destroyed the Christian Democrat and Socialist Parties, and in 1994 there was a huge electoral shift, this time to the newly formed party of the magnate Silvio Berlusconi.

NEWYORKER: Booted

The chairman of Germany's Social Democrat party Sigmar Gabriel called his socialist counterpart in Paris a "victim of slander" by the ruling coalition and by Merkel personally in a recent interview with German daily Die Welt.

CNN: After 'Merkozy,' what next for Europe?

Mr Dehaene, a Christian Democrat, seems likely, along with his Socialist coalition friends, to find some egg on his face.

ECONOMIST: Belgium sinks in deeper