After 10 years as prime minister, taking on the challenge of succeeding an overwhelming giant like Jean-Claude Juncker at the head of the Luxembourg Government, Xavier Bettel has been forced to step aside after losing the elections. The arrival of Luc Frieden also means saying goodbye to the chair of the European Council, where he was already one of the most senior members. “Today is my last summit. It has been an honor to represent my country in the EU and I want to thank everyone with whom I had the privilege and pleasure of working.. I will miss you all. XB,” he tweeted with a selfie surrounded by a dozen smiling leaders.

Bettell, lawyer, former councilor, former échevin, former deputy, first gay to head the Executive of the Grand Duchy, is without a doubt the most Belgian of all the non-Belgians in world politics.. By marriage, your partner is a Valón architect. For that strange mix of liberal, universalist and local values. For its contradictions, improvisations and daily twists. For its flexibility and pragmatism. By the mixture of gravity and frivolity. For giving lessons by pretending that the income of the Duchy is not what it is.. Because of that unique capacity of the Benelux to generate politicians who understand that nothing, absolutely nothing, is impossible. That everything can be solved with open mind, patience and patches. That everything can be achieved by spending enough hours discussing, with creativity and without ideological or economic fundamentalism.

Bettell is a practicing Catholic perfectly comfortable with ancient institutions, but who stood firm on the separation of Church and State.. A liberal in almost everything, but conservative when it came to family, someone to whom marriage seemed as important for rights as for his beliefs.. Being Belgian, or Luxembourgish, means swimming like a fish in water where most would drown in despair.. It means seeing a way when the rest only finds closed doors.. It inevitably means being part of coalitions. Where, as a friend says, the Trotskyists would be the equivalent of Macron's voters in France, the BNG, Ciudadanos and Sumar, or PP, PSOE and ERC can be on the same team without anyone finding it a blasphemy, a craziness.

Being Belgian, in Belgium, Luxembourg or anywhere else, means in politics and public relations breaking all the corsets. It means having an infinite ambition, ego or naivety that leads you to try to play in divisions that are above your weight, regardless of the size of your GDP or population.. It means getting into each and every one of the messes, not giving in to the evidence. Find a way (be nice) to make a place for yourself. Bettell comes from a tiny country that has produced Commission presidents, plural. Who has had and has pawns at the head of other community institutions. Who moves and behaves as if he were French or German.

The outgoing minister, who will remain as minister without problems with fallen rings, understood that the best, the only way for his voice to be heard was to always participate, something that the Spanish people should learn.. In front of the cameras in three languages, getting wet, with jokes (like answering calls to journalists' phones during a press conference), with catchy phrases that will be collected. Belgians, like Basques, are born wherever they want. But they move better.