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
Slovak Democratic Coalition law, which restricted candidature of such coalitions. As a reaction of passing an "anti-coalition" law, the SDK transferred itself from electoral coalition into a political party with 150 members, with each one being a candidate into the parliament. Although Movement for a Democratic Slovakia narrowly won the parliamentary election in 1998 with 27% of the vote, it was unable to form a government coalition. Instead, the SDK, which finished second with 26.33% of the vote formed government coalition with three other parties - Party of the Democratic Left (SDĽ) (14.66%), Party of the Hungarian Coalition (SMK) (9.12%) and Party of