2007–08 Belgian government formation partition of Belgium. On November 6, the formation talks became the longest in Belgian history. When the Parliament confirmed the formation of an interim Government, it had been 196 days since the Belgian people had voted out the previous coalition. It was the second longest formation period in European history, after the Dutch record of 208 days in 1977. Talks were interrupted twice by the resignation of the "formateur", which left the political parties waiting for a new appointment by the King. Guy Verhofstadt was appointed as mediator on December 3, with the task not only of looking into the
2017 German federal election the Free Democrats and the Greens as that was the only viable coalition without the AfD or The Left, both of which had been ruled out by Merkel as coalition partners before the election. On 9 October 2017 Merkel officially announced that she would invite the Free Democrats and the Greens for talks about building a coalition government starting on 18 October 2017. In the final days of the preliminary talks, the four parties had still failed to come to agreement on migration and climate issues. Preliminary talks between the parties collapsed on 20 November after the FDP withdrew, arguing