Guy Maurice Marie Louise Verhofstadt is a Belgian liberal politician and an advocate of a Federal Europe.
40 Facts About Guy Verhofstadt
2.
Guy Verhofstadt has been a member of the European Parliament from Belgium since 2009.
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Guy Verhofstadt was a member of the Belgian Chamber of Representatives from 1985 to 2009.
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Guy Verhofstadt served as deputy prime minister of Belgium and minister of Budget from 1985 to 1992.
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Guy Verhofstadt was the prime minister of Belgium from 1999 to 2008.
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Guy Verhofstadt was the ALDE Party nominee for President of the European Commission in the 2014 European Parliament election.
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Guy Verhofstadt served as the European Parliament's Brexit Coordinator and Chair of the Brexit Steering Group from 2016 to 2020.
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Guy Verhofstadt quickly became the secretary of Willy De Clercq, who was at that time the president of the Flemish liberal party.
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Guy Verhofstadt gradually moved away from neoliberalism, and became more of a centrist figure, a change which especially became clear during his first term as Prime Minister.
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Guy Verhofstadt quickly formed a coalition with the Flemish socialists and greens and the French-speaking counterparts of these parties in Brussels and Wallonia.
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Guy Verhofstadt was appointed Prime Minister on 12 July 1999, the first liberal to hold that office since 1938.
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Guy Verhofstadt was awarded the Vision for Europe Award in 2002 for his work toward a more unified Europe.
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Guy Verhofstadt was suggested as a candidate to replace Romano Prodi as the next President of the European Commission, but his candidacy was opposed and rejected by a coalition led by Tony Blair and other leaders who had disagreed with Guy Verhofstadt's uncompromising criticisms of the Anglo-American invasion of Iraq the previous year.
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Guy Verhofstadt said that Israel has the right to defend itself, but has now responded with excessive violence.
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The broadcast of the report led to widespread alarm and consternation in French-speaking Belgium and Guy Verhofstadt condemned the report as "irresponsible".
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Guy Verhofstadt was sworn in as municipal councilor in Ghent in January 2007, as a result of the 2006 municipal elections.
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Guy Verhofstadt even postponed a visit to the Russian President Vladimir Putin to be able to go to the first session of the newly elected council.
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The King therefore asked Guy Verhofstadt to mediate an "interim government" that would be in office for three months and could propose a 2008 budget.
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Guy Verhofstadt has since been appointed to the Committee on Constitutional Affairs.
20.
On 1 July 2009, Guy Verhofstadt was elected President of the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe group in the European Parliament.
21.
Guy Verhofstadt was put forward as the possible candidate for replacing Jose Manuel Barroso as the president of the European Commission by a coalition of greens, socialists and liberals.
22.
In September 2016, Guy Verhofstadt was named the European Parliament's representative on matters relating to Brexit.
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In November 2016, Guy Verhofstadt warned the European Parliament of a coming "ring of autocrats", citing the increasing assertiveness of Russia and Turkey, and contemplating the possibility of a Trump presidency.
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From 2019, Guy Verhofstadt was a member of the Working Group on the Conference on the Future of Europe.
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Since 2011, Guy Verhofstadt has written monthly commentaries on strategic spotlights for Project Syndicate, an international media organization.
26.
Guy Verhofstadt condemned the killings of protesters during Bahrain's pro-democracy uprising in 2011.
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In 2017, Guy Verhofstadt opposed the Catalan independence referendum, but denounced Spain's use of violence.
28.
Via Twitter according to the New York Times, Guy Verhofstadt said Tsipras "should stop trying to play Putin against the EU" and that Tsipras "should play according to the common rules and conduct serious reforms".
29.
In May 2015, news media reported that Guy Verhofstadt was included in a Russian blacklist of prominent people from the European Union who are not allowed to enter the country.
30.
In June 2018, Guy Verhofstadt said there was a "circle of evil around our continent": Putin's Russia, Erdogan's Turkey and Trump's United States.
31.
Guy Verhofstadt criticised UK Prime Minister David Cameron and French president Francois Hollande for opposing the European Commission's proposal to distribute asylum requests for migrants over all countries of the European Union.
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Guy Verhofstadt called on governments of France, the UK, and Hungary to stop building up walls and border security measures, and to shift their effort on humanitarian assistance.
33.
In October 2017, Guy Verhofstadt claimed that Northern Ireland was stuck in a "frozen conflict".
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In February 2019, Guy Verhofstadt said that Brexit leaders such as Boris Johnson and Jacob Rees-Mogg would suffer a similar fate to the leaders of the French Revolution and "end up on the guillotine".
35.
In May 2019, Guy Verhofstadt made public a private joke between him and the UK's chief negotiator, Olly Robbins, in which Robbins "joked that he would want EU citizenship after Brexit".
36.
On 10 May 2019, Guy Verhofstadt joined anti-Brexit supporters in London.
37.
Guy Verhofstadt said "We have to stop nationalism and populism the fastest as possible because otherwise, it could be the end of a fantastic project".
38.
On 25 July 2019, Guy Verhofstadt branded UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson's vow to take the UK out of the EU on 31 October as "irresponsible", due to the possibility of a No-deal Brexit.
39.
In September 2019, Guy Verhofstadt attacked the words used by UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson, during the Brexit process, calling it "the language of Europe's dark past".
40.
In 2023, Guy Verhofstadt re-iterated his criticisms of Brexit, stating that it paved the path for the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine.