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Far-right and far-left parties set to become largest forces in parliament after June 9 vote

When Belgians go to the polls on June 9, many of them will be voting for a party that wants to break their country apart.

Fringe parties are gaining traction across Europe and in Belgium — a country divided along ethnic and linguistic lines — voters are set to elevate both the extreme right and the far left as the two largest parties in the federal parliament.

“The explanation could be similar for both: it’s populism,” said Audrey Vandeleene of Ghent University. “You reject established parties and you look for alternatives.”

Belgium’s far-right Vlaams Belang (VB) party, which openly advocates for the secession of Flanders — the more affluent, Dutch-speaking region in the country’s north — is set to win the most seats in the highly-fragmented parliament: 26 out of 150 seats, according to polls.

The second-largest parliamentary faction is likely to be the far-left Workers’ Party (PTB/PVDA) based in Wallonia — the country’s French-speaking southern region — which is forecast to win 20 seats.

The formerly fringe parties coming out on top is likely to further complicate Belgium’s notoriously difficult government formation, which is usually comprised of a handful or more parties.

In 2011, the country broke the world record for the longest time without a government in peacetime. The current seven-party coalition under Prime Minister Alexander De Croo took office after almost 500 days of negotiations. “For the extreme right in Belgium, one of the main points is to put the country in two, which would lead to chaos,” De Croo told the Financial Times.

While parties at a federal level are likely to exclude VB from any power-sharing agreement, the secessionist party could become part of the regional government in Flanders. On June 9, Belgian voters will elect lawmakers for the federal and the regional parliaments. VB is for the first time set to outperform the less radical nationalist N-VA party, which currently governs Flanders.

N-VA has not ruled out forming a coalition with VB at a regional level, despite the latter party growing out of the extreme-right Vlaams Blok, which was in effect banned in 2004 for incitement to racism and segregation. VB has capitalised on the discontent among people who do not feel represented by mainstream parties and blames immigration for economic issues such as the rising cost of living.

At a village fair in Vlimmeren, around 60km north-east of Brussels, VB recently set up a stall under the banner “Flanders is ours again”.

Bart Claes, a VB member of the Flemish parliament, said the rural area was “fertile ground” for his party. “People have a feeling, a righteous feeling, that they’re being let down and forgotten by the policymakers.”

Party leader Tom Van Grieken argues that Flanders’ secession from Belgium is not just a “romantic” ideal, but that “it is also a financial thing”, arguing that the northern region should no longer be footing the bill for less wealthy Wallonia.

“Belgium has to change,” said Van Grieken. “The elite in Belgium is very conscious and aware about climate change and the end of the world. A lot of Flemish people are worried about the end of the month.”

Jarno Princen, a 26-year-old dock worker at the port of Antwerp originally from Vlimmeren, said VB was the only party that takes the issue of “illegal immigrants that are coming to Belgium” seriously. He complained about asylum seekers receiving better treatment than Belgians without working. “I find that negative to the other people that work hard and earn less,” he added.

Despite Van Grieken’s push for secession, analysts and even Vlaams Belang voters are sceptical it will ever materialise. The move would trigger a constitutional crisis and throw into question the status of the capital Brussels, which is its own bilingual region within Flanders.

“They are a little bit extreme. When they come into [power] they must calm down,” said Veerle Oosthuizen, a 44-year-old VB voter who works in building renovation.

If Flanders is dominated by right-wing parties, the polar opposite is true of Wallonia, where the Socialist Party (PS) is dominant and its challengers come from the far-left, not the far-right.

At a PS congress on May Day in the city of Charleroi, supporters waved red flags and chanted the international workers’ anthem. “I vote socialist because I come from a socialist background,” said Guillaume Thyrion, a 23-year-old communications student whose family has been working in factories for generations. “It’s the only true workers’ party.”

But that banner has also been taken up by the Workers’ Party, which is one of the few cross-border parties that also campaigns in Flanders, with moderate success.

In Wallonia, the Workers’ Party campaign for a tax on millionaires and an end to austerity measures is gaining traction. It is now polling third at 16 per cent in the French-speaking region, compared with 11 per cent in the last regional election. The party would come second in the federal parliament because of its strong showing in Brussels, where it is also polling at 16 per cent plus the 11 per cent it would gain in Flanders, according to polls.

“People don’t see themselves represented anymore,” said Peter Mertens, general secretary of the Workers’ Party. “There is this huge gap between the political landscape . . . and reality on the factory floors.”

Mertens said that unlike the far right, his party is trying to frame this in a “positive” way. “They’re trying to mobilise people’s anger against other people who are in misery, against the refugees.”

VB’s “dangerous agenda” on independence would fail, Mertens predicted. “It’s no coincidence that this is the place of surrealism,” Mertens said in reference to Belgium’s famous artistic movement. “There is more unity about staying together in this surrealistic Belgium than being apart.”

Didier Caluwaerts, professor at the Free University Brussels (VUB) said the two regions had been historically divided along party lines: “Flanders has always been more conservative, more right-wing than Wallonia.”

With its large industries, Wallonia was Belgium’s “economic powerhouse” until roughly the 1950s, after which investment shifted to Flanders and the francophone region’s industrial base declined, according to Caluwaerts. This “economic legacy” together with high unemployment and lower economic growth were all reasons why the left was stronger in Wallonia, he added.

If VB entered a coalition with N-VA at a regional level, it could have repercussions for the federal government, as other parties would be forced to shun them both, said Paul Magnette, head of the PS. “Working with people who work with the far right is out of the question.

“It’s true there is a general tendency in Europe towards political fragmentation,” said Magnette. “Belgium has always been able to govern itself, whatever happens. We are the example that even when it’s too complicated, we will get there.”

EU support at risk if group keeps key ‘georeturn’ principle in awarding contracts, says Philippe Baptiste

The European Space Agency will have to abandon one of the core principles driving multilateral investment in its space programmes or risk losing EU support, says the head of France’s space agency, CNES.

Philippe Baptiste, who took over at CNES in 2021, said the policy of awarding contracts to countries in proportion to their investments in individual programmes meant Europe would struggle to develop competitive sovereign launch capability in future.

The process, known as georeturn, often compels prime contractors to award contracts by nationality rather than competitiveness.

It has been blamed for delays and budget-busting costs on Europe’s newest heavy-lift rocket, Ariane 6, which is due to fly for the first time this summer — four years later than planned and substantially over budget.

“You don’t know how many warehouses there are for Ariane 6 and how many companies are working all over Europe on the same product,” he said. “This is much too expensive. We have to get rid of that. That is what we are pushing here in France.”

As Europe increased funding for space, it would require a space agency that could implement programmes more efficiently, he said. “Georeturn is poison. Either ESA is able to change, or if it does not change . . . the European Commission at some point will do without,” he added.

ESA’s director-general Josef Aschbacher rejected Baptiste’s criticism.

“With the system we have in place, we have created some of the most successful programmes worldwide,” he told the Financial Times. “Galileo and the science programmes are top of class, despite having to manage 22 member states and georeturn.

“Why would you change a winning horse in a race which is getting faster?”

The clash comes as the ESA prepares proposals for a reform of georeturn, as a result of the decision last year to introduce a competitive procurement process for Europe’s launch requirements.

The decision was driven by Germany’s frustration with the Ariane 6 programme, and has sparked a fierce reaction in France, which sees it as a threat to its decades-long dominance of Europe’s rocket manufacturing.

Several ESA officials said France’s push to end georeturn was no more than an attempt to strengthen the EU’s hold over the agency and by implication France’s influence over programmes.

Founded in 1975, ESA acts as the EU’s procurement agency for space systems, but it is an intergovernmental organisation whose members include non-EU countries such as the UK, Canada and Switzerland. 

EU procurement may be open to competition, said one veteran ESA official, but the final decisions were “just politics . . . So without georeturn, decisions are more influenceable”.

“If you want to deviate from this principle it’s the end of ESA,” said another senior ESA official. “It’s really pointing towards ending ESA as an intergovernmental organisation and letting the EU take over.”

The debate highlights the delicate path Aschbacher has to tread as he attempts to hold together European collaboration on space while introducing greater competition and efficiency into programmes.

Other countries were pushing to “keep ESA as a very strong intergovernmental organisation”, Aschbacher said. “The majority of countries [are] very satisfied with the way it works.”

ESA officials believe the policy can be adapted without sacrificing the principle of guaranteeing a fair return on investment. In essence, the industry will be free to choose its own suppliers, and governments will only then be asked to contribute funding proportionate to the contracts awarded to their industry.

“This is still georeturn but in reverse,” the ESA official said.

The ESA is also expected to reduce the number of programmes to which georeturn applies. The agency will present proposals for reforms in June.

Germany insisted on the competition in launch as a quid pro quo for agreeing to a near €1bn subsidy for Ariane 6 flights between 2027 and 2030. France, Italy and Germany agreed to the injection, which will enable Ariane 6 to compete on price with SpaceX’s reusable heavy-lift Falcon 9 rocket.

Unlike Falcon, Ariane is not reusable, a decision now widely regarded to have rendered the rocket uncompetitive even before it makes its first flight.

Ariane 6 has been designed to be a flexible but expendable heavy-lift rocket that in its most powerful version will be able to carry satellite payloads of up to 20,600kg into space.

How capturing carbon from the air might reshape the green transition

The nascent technology is expensive but its projected cost decline might transform the energy switch

Take a bird’s-eye view of the decarbonisation landscape, and the divergence between the fortunes of the different technologies is striking.

For those relying on smallish equipment that can be made in factories — think solar panels — costs have plummeted and adoption soared. Those that require big, bespoke engineering projects, such as conventional nuclear plants, have suffered delays and cost increases. Wind turbine troubles also suggest that scale works best when what is being scaled up is manufacturing capacity, rather than the size of the product.

Proponents of direct air capture (or DAC) are hoping to harness the magic of the learning curve. This nascent technology sucks CO₂ out of the air and then stores it underground. The world’s largest plant, inaugurated by Climeworks in Iceland, will capture 36,000 tonnes of CO₂ per year — roughly the amount emitted by 4,500 UK households. At an estimated cost of $1,000 per tonne of CO₂ today, it is also eye-poppingly expensive.

Yet unlike large-scale nuclear, DAC plants are modular — made up of lots of boxes with fans and filters. That raises hopes for an entirely different sort of cost curve.

Take the boxes. Spreading their cost over the CO₂ they will capture over their useful life yields a capex cost of $330/tCO2, or a third of the total. As this kit moves from being custom-made to manufactured at scale, however, its price will fall sharply. Add in improvements in energy efficiency and operating costs, and — if DAC really does scale up to the multi-gigatonnes of capacity required by most net zero pathways — its cost may end up in the region of $100-150/tCO2 by 2050.

Of course, 25-year forecasts are not much more than lines on charts. Yet the DAC story looks broadly plausible, and would make it competitive with some of the costlier carbon-abatement options.

For example, one of the (speculative) options for decarbonising long-distance flying relies on making synthetic jet fuel using green hydrogen and then reacting it with CO₂ captured from the air. That is an expensive way round the problem: rough numbers suggest it might cost $220 per tonne of avoided CO₂, twice as much as DAC.

It is not hard to see why airlines might well prefer homegrown decarbonisation options, which create a supply chain they can work with and even perhaps invest in. Current regulation pushes them in that direction too.

But such hard-to-abate sectors would do well to support the scale up of DAC. Its projected cost decline could reduce the growing burden of the energy transition.

Proxy adviser Glass Lewis says 2018 pay award is ‘excessive’ and proposed reincorporation is risky

Proxy adviser Glass Lewis has urged Tesla shareholders to vote against Elon Musk’s $56bn pay award and a proposal to reincorporate the electric vehicle maker in Texas, a major blow for the board ahead of its crucial annual meeting next month.

Glass Lewis said the chief executive’s package of share options was unduly dilutive and of “excessive size” in a report released on Saturday. It also criticised the proposed move to Texas as offering “uncertain benefits and additional risk” to shareholders.

The proxy adviser also raised issues with Musk’s “slate of extraordinarily time-consuming projects”, in particular the 2022 acquisition and ongoing overhaul of Twitter, now known as X, which it claims are distracting the billionaire from leading the world’s largest EV manufacturer. Musk also runs SpaceX, Neuralink and the Boring Company.

Tesla’s board has been lobbying investors to re-ratify the $56bn award given in 2018, which was struck down by a Delaware judge in January due to concerns over its size and the independence of the board. In response, Musk vowed to leave the state and move Tesla’s incorporation to Texas.

Tesla chair Robyn Denholm has argued that Musk deserves to be paid so much because the company hit ambitious targets for revenue and its stock price. She brushed off criticism she is too close to the CEO as “crap”.

Glass Lewis’s recommendations are significant because they influence the voting of large institutional investors such as Vanguard, Capital Group, Norges and State Street, all of whom are top-10 shareholders in Tesla and voted against the pay proposal the first time around. Nevertheless, the proposal passed with 73 per cent approval.

Fellow proxy adviser ISS is expected to release its own report soon ahead of Tesla’s June 13 annual meeting.

While winning the pay vote would not overturn the court’s decision, the carmaker hopes it will prove investors still back the package six years later and could be decisive in subsequent legal appeals.

If successful, Musk’s stake will jump to more than 20 per cent from 13 per cent. A loss would be symbolically damaging for Denholm and the rest of the board and raise questions about Musk’s future at Tesla. He has threatened to develop future artificial intelligence products elsewhere if he does not gain greater control of the automaker, which he is repositioning as an AI and robotics company.

Some large investors have indicated they are prepared to back the award regardless of proxy advice. Baillie Gifford’s flagship Scottish Mortgage Investment Trust told the FT this week that it was in favour because Musk had delivered “remarkable corporate performance leading to huge creation of value for shareholders”.

Tesla also has to persuade thousands of retail investors around the world to vote in favour of the resolutions. They account for about 30 per cent of shares, an unusually high amount for a listed company, and will be crucial in the outcome.

On the pay vote, a simple majority must be in favour, excluding those shares owned by Musk and his brother Kimbal. Reincorporation in Texas has a higher bar, requiring a majority of all shares outstanding, meaning those not cast are counted as a “no”.

Glass Lewis also recommended voting against the re-election of Kimbal to the eight-person board, warning “shareholders may reasonably consider the board’s overall independence to be a material concern.”

Could Ozempic be the answer to a longer life?

It’s the question many scientists are asking about the controversial drug, a glucagon-like peptide-1 receptor agonist (GLP-1), as some research suggests it could help humans age with less chronic diseases. The same goes for glucose-dependent insulinotropic peptide receptor agonists (GIP) such as Zepbound and Mounjaro, leaving some experts to start seeing them as potential longevity pills and considering how in the future they can be prescribed safely to more people, especially as rates of obesity continue to rise.

“The singular most effective and consistent way of extending lifespan in animals is caloric restriction,” says Dr. Douglas Vaughan, a professor of medicine at Northwestern University and director of the Potocsnak Longevity Institute. “That’s been demonstrated to work on everything from worms to flies to mice to monkeys. If you can find a way to get people to chronically reduce their caloric intake, it sort of makes sense that it might have an effect on aging. It’s probably not as simple as that and there could be unexpected effects of these drugs that might negate or prevent the anti aging effect, but it’s a great hypothesis and it needs to be tested rigorously.”

What are GLP-1s and GIPs?

Originally, semaglutide and similar drugs were primarily developed to manage type 2 diabetes. They work by activating GLP-1 receptors and increasing insulin levels in the body and thereby decreasing glucose levels. They can help with appetite suppression and weight loss since GLP-1 receptors exist in the digestive system. Research shows these drugs delay gut motility, slowing how quickly food is digested and curbing hunger and food cravings.

However, GLP-1 receptors also exist in organ systems throughout the body such as the kidneys, heart, blood vessels, and of course, the brain. This may be why they prove beneficial for managing or preventing several other chronic diseases and reducing systemic inflammation, though undoubtedly more studies are needed to understand the mechanism of action.

What has research shown so far about their benefits?

A wide variety of research on GLP-1 and GIPs receptor agonists finds they may combat a constellation of chronic and age-related diseases including heart disease, nonalcoholic fatty liver, disease, kidney disease, sleep apnea and polycystic ovarian syndrome. Some preliminary research also finds that semaglutide, a type of GLP-1 therapy, restored the function of anti-cancer cells known as NK cells in people with obesity, potentially lowering their risk for certain types of cancer.

These drugs also appear to have neuroprotective benefits. A small study published in April in the New England Journal of Medicine found lixisenatide—another GLP-1 receptor agonist and close cousin of Wegovy and Ozempic—slowed early Parkison’s disease. Some researchers are also testing whether these drugs can prevent Alzheimer’s disease.

Even more, compelling preliminary research finds these drugs could benefit those in treatment for addiction. Animal studies, small studies on humans and anecdotal reports suggest that these medications can lower alcohol intake by curbing alcohol cravings—another lifestyle habit strongly associated with shorter lifespan and healthspan.

Most experts agree that these drugs would need to be studied more extensively for each potential indication in order to safely prescribe them outside of their FDA-approved usages, which is currently for diabetes, diabetes-related heart disease and obesity.

Purely from a statistical standpoint, it is likely that the number of people taking GLP-1 receptor agonists and related drugs will continue to increase, since by 2030 nearly half of all US adults will likely classify as obese. With that will come more chronic disease. Currently, roughly 4 in 10 adults in the US live with two or more chronic diseases, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Dr. Nir Barzilai, director of the Institute for Aging Research at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine, has been studying the potential for repurposing a number of already FDA-approved medications to promote longevity. He recently published an analysis in the journal Medical Research Archives that reviewed the existing research on a number of drugs that appear to target the twelve hallmarks of aging such as mitochondrial dysfunction, cellular senescence and telomere shortening. GLP-1 receptor agonists made the shortlist after SGLT2 inhibitors, metformin and the osteoporosis drug, bisphosphonates.

Dr. Barzilai envisions a future where semaglutide and these other drugs are part of a longer term plan for disease prevention, much in the way people take over-the-counter supplements. He points out that it’s a common practice for healthy people to take vitamins and supplements that are purported to slow the effects of aging, specifically antioxidants, even though the research demonstrates that they don’t significantly impact health and we don’t know enough about their effects.

Risks of seeing these drugs as a magic bullet

However, Dr. Barzilai cautions that GLP-1 receptor agonists are not a cure-all. “I’m not here calling for doctors to give those drugs to anyone. I’m just calling their attention that we check the general therapeutic effects of those drugs. And we have to consider them because we can and we should in order to prevent, not one disease, but two or three and to decrease mortality.”

Physicians like Dr. Kinga Kiszko, an assistant professor of geriatrics and palliative medicine at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, caution that these medications aren’t for everyone, especially when it comes to older people. “A lot of the times where I see the new agents for diabetes is when they do more harm than good, which is sometimes just a result of polypharmacy,” she says. Dr. Kiszko would like to see more well-designed studies that measure the impact of these therapies on elderly patients. “There’s such heterogeneity in the older adult population, there are some people who we absolutely do not want to lose weight.”

Dr. Maria Daniela Hurtado Andrade, an assistant professor of medicine and endocrinologist at the Mayo Clinic, is already prescribing semaglutide as a tool to prevent the cascading health effect of weight gain that often leads to early death. While it’s recommended that clinicians reserve these medications for patients with a BMI of 27 or greater, she sometimes gives them to patients whose health is trending in a concerning way. Perhaps they do not currently meet the criteria for being overweight or obese, but they are gaining an average of 10 pounds annually, she says. Waiting another year to start the medication could prove detrimental to their health and up their risk for multiple chronic diseases and early death.

“I use my clinical judgment and sometimes do not adhere to the guidelines, but consider other aspects. There have been women who do not meet criteria by BMI to start these medications but I still start them, because I want to prevent disease instead of letting this happen,” says Andrade, who is also a co-investigator at the Mayo Precision Medicine for Obesity program. “In my mind, it is always case-by-case. I take into account the individual medical history, family history of risks of using these medications and then I discuss all these aspects with patients and my patients make an informed decision at the end of the day.”

It was a slower week for big rounds compared to many of the past few. Nevertheless, the week saw a $1 billion round go to yet another AI startup, and biotech and blockchain also saw some big deals.

1. Scale AI, $1B, artificial intelligence: This week was like many — one topped with a big AI round. Scale AI raised $1 billion in a round led by Accel that values the data labeling and evaluation startup at a stunning $13.8 billion. The valuation is nearly double the $7.3 billion the San Francisco-based startup hit after a $325 million raise in April 2021. The new financing included some of the biggest names in tech, with Nvidia, Meta and Amazon all investing. The new Scale AI round is the second $1 billion raise for a U.S.-based AI startup this month, after CoreWeave raised a whopping $1.1 billion in a fresh funding round led by Coatue in a deal valuing the company at $19 billion, per The Wall Street Journal. Scale AI plays a key role in creating large language models and accurately labeling text, images, video and voice data. The startup also creates and fine-tunes data sets.

2. AltruBio, $225M, biotech: AltruBio was the biggest biotech raise of the week, securing a $225 million Series B led by BVF Partners. The San Francisco-based startup is developing therapeutics for the treatment of ulcerative colitis and other immunological diseases. The new cash will be used to support ongoing and planned Phase 2 clinical trials in ulcerative colitis. Founded in 2000, AltruBio has raised nearly $328 million, per Crunchbase.

3. Farcaster, $150M, blockchain: Is Web3 funding back? It saw a little pickup in Q1, and more rounds like this will help, as Web3 social media platform Farcaster raised a $150 million round led by Paradigm. The startup will use the new cash to grow its user base and add developer tools. In March, it was reported Merkle Manufactory — the Web3 social media firm behind Farcaster — was in talks with venture investors about a new funding round that would value the company at more than $1 billion.

4. Suno, $125M, artificial intelligence: Investors can’t get enough of different ways to use generative AI. Music startup Suno snared a $125 million round led by Lightspeed Venture Partners, Nat Friedman, Daniel Gross, Matrix and Founder Collective. The Cambridge, Massachusetts-based startup allows users to create songs from simple text prompts, generating voice, lyrics and music. In announcing the deal, the company said 10 million people have already made music using Suno even though it released its first product just eight months ago.

5. Progentos Therapeutics, $65M, biotech: Watertown, Massachusetts-based Progentos Therapeutics closed a $65 million Series A led by Netherlands-based Forbion Capital Partners. The biotech company is looking to regenerate myelin and restore function for patients with multiple sclerosis — a condition that affects nearly 3 million people worldwide. Founded last year, this is the company’s first announced raise, per Crunchbase.

6. (tied) Allez Health, $60M, healthcare: Carlsbad, California-based Allez Health, formerly Zense-Life, raised a $60 million Series A+ led by Osang Healthcare. The startup develops smart biosensors for connected digital health platforms. Founded in 2018, the company has raised more than $62 million, per Crunchbase.

6. (tied) Tuesday Health, $60M, healthcare: Nashville, Tennessee-based Tuesday Health, a supportive care organization delivering care and support for seriously ill patients and caregivers, locked up a $60 million strategic investment from Valtruis, The Blue Venture Fund, Mass General Brigham Ventures and CareSource. Founded last year, this is the company’s first announced raise, per Crunchbase.

8. 280 Earth, $50M, climate tech: Mountain View, California-based 280 Earth, a direct air capture startup to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, raised a $50 million Series B from a handful of investors, including Alphabet. Founded in 2022, this is the company’s first announced raise, per Crunchbase.

9. Wayspring, $45M, healthcare: Nashville, Tennessee-based Wayspring, a substance use disorder care startup, raised a reported $45 million round led by CVS Health Ventures. Founded in 2012, the company has raised $161 million, per Crunchbase.

10. Pratika, $35.5M, edtech: Palo Alto, California-based language learning app Pratika raised a $35.5 million Series A led by Blossom Capital. Founded in 2022, the company has raised $36.5 million, per Crunchbase.

While Scale AI’s massive raise dwarfed all others, there was another big AI raise abroad.

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