Daniel Ducarme

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Daniel Ducarme (born 8 March 1954 in Liège) is a Belgian politician and former Minister-President of the Brussels-Capital Region.

Starting his political career in the Liberal Reformist Party (PRL) Ducarme served as mayor of Thuin in Wallonia from 1988 to 2000, becoming party president in 1999. In 2000 he moved to Schaarbeek in the Brussels-Capital Region and stood for election to the Schaerbeeck council.

The PRL merged with its centre-right partners to create the Reformist Movement (MR) in 2002, which Ducarme led as president. In 2003 he replaced his MR colleague François-Xavier de Donnéa as Minister-President of the Brussels-Capital Region, provoking considerable resentment among parties representing the Flemish-speaking community as he was essentially a monoglot Francophone, unlike his predecessors as Minister-President.

Ducarme resigned in 2004 following allegations of improprities in his tax affairs by the newspaper Vers l'Avenir.^[1] He was succeeded as Minister-President by Jacques Simonet and as president of the MR by Didier Reynders.

In 2006, Ducarme proposed to return to politics, wishing to stand in Schaarbeek on the MR list in the October 2006 elections, but was ultimately prevented from doing so. In apparent compensation he was appointed by Reynders to represent the MR as a roving ambassador abroad.