Gaston Eyskens

Biography

In December 1970 Eyskens’s government carried out the first state reform, after which Belgium ceased to be a unitary state. In February of that year he had declared in the Chamber of Representatives that the unitary state had been “overtaken by events”. He is also credited with a shorter formula: “The Belgium of our fathers is no more.”

Gaston François Marie Eyskens was born on 1 April 1905 in Lier, the son of a commercial traveller, Antonius Eyskens, and Maria Voeten. He studied at the Catholic University of Leuven, took a Master of Science at Columbia University in New York in 1927, became a doctor of commercial sciences in 1930, and in 1931 completed a degree in political and social sciences. From 1931 he taught at Leuven and remained there until 1975; he became a full professor in 1934 and was later dean of the faculty of economics. As a student he belonged to a Catholic Flemish student association and took an interest in international cooperation and the League of Nations. He also taught at a social school for Christian workers, and from 1932 he headed the Christian workers’ association (ACW) in the Leuven district. In 1934–1935 he ran the offices of the ministers Philip Van Isacker and Edmond Rubbens. In 1939 he was elected to the Chamber of Representatives for Leuven, and he remained in parliament until 1965. In the spring of 1940 he left for France with his family and took part in parliamentary meetings in Limoges, which condemned the conduct of King Leopold III. In September 1940 he returned to Leuven. The occupying authorities briefly suspended him from teaching.

After the Liberation Eyskens was Minister of Finance (in 1945 and from 1947 to 1949). On 11 August 1949 he formed his first government, a coalition of Christian democrats and liberals. It devalued the Belgian franc and held a consultative referendum on the return of Leopold III. About 57.7 per cent voted for the king’s return, but Flanders was in favour and Wallonia against. The referendum settled nothing, and the government resigned in June 1950. Eyskens then served for a few weeks as Minister of Economic Affairs in the cabinet of Jean Duvieusart, but left it: his party held him partly responsible for the king’s abdication.

He returned in December 1952 as chairman of his party’s group in the Chamber. After the elections of 1958 he became prime minister again. At first he led a single-party minority government, and from November 1958 a coalition with the liberals. In November 1958 the School Pact was concluded, ending a long dispute over schools. The economic expansion laws of 1959, according to Dutch-language biographers, underlay the growth of the 1960s, above all in Flanders. On 30 June 1960 the Belgian Congo was granted independence; Eyskens travelled to the ceremony in Léopoldville and signed the declaration.

The “Unitary Law” on putting public finances in order followed. In the winter of 1960–1961 it provoked strikes that lasted for weeks, mainly in Wallonia. The elections of 26 March 1961 were a defeat for his party, and on 25 April the cabinet resigned.

In 1963 King Baudouin made him a Minister of State. Eyskens was a senator for Leuven from 1965 to 1973, and from July 1965 to March 1966 he again headed the Ministry of Finance in the government of Pierre Harmel. On 17 June 1968, after the crisis over the split of the University of Leuven, he headed a government for the third time, now a coalition of Christian democrats and socialists. The university divided into a Dutch-language Leuven and a French-language university at Louvain-la-Neuve. The reform of 1970 introduced cultural communities and regions. He failed to reach agreement on the status of the six Voeren municipalities, and in November 1972 he resigned; he remained in office until January 1973, when Edmond Leburton succeeded him. In June 1973 he left politics.

In September 1973 he was raised to the hereditary nobility with the title of viscount; his motto was “For the people”. His elder son Mark Eyskens was prime minister in 1981. Gaston Eyskens died in Leuven on 3 January 1988.