No sooner had he been sworn in by King Philippe than he arrived at the informal summit of European leaders in Brussels on Monday, February 3. "When I arrived, they asked me who I was," said the new Belgian prime minister, with his usual deadpan delivery, when interviewed by RTBF.

A complete unknown on the European scene, 54-year-old Bart De Wever has, by contrast, been a leading figure in national politics for the past 20 years, marked by his trenchant statements, his sometimes virulent nationalism and, most recently, by the spectacular turn that has made him, president of the New Flemish Alliance (N-VA), the separatist party he founded in 2001, the head of Belgium's federal government.

On Tuesday afternoon, he was due to make a policy statement to the Chamber of Representatives and then seek the confidence of his four partners, the French-speaking centrists and liberals and the Flemish socialists and Christian democrats. Abandoning the Antwerp town hall, which he conquered in 2012, for the prime minister's office, De Wever (known as "BDW") will now lead a country which, in 2008, he claimed no longer existed. Asked the following year about the political situation in Wallonia, dominated by the Socialists and which he considered "bankrupt," he said he refused to comment on "a foreign situation."

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