Belgium’s Prime Minister Elio Di Rupo has handed his government’s resignation to the King.
It comes after this weekend’s general election which saw his Socialist party defeated.
The palace confirmed that King Philip had accepted the resignation and that the government would continue in its job until a new one was sworn in.
The Flemish separatist party N-VA won 32 percent of the vote, while the Socialists managed 30 percent.
The NVA wants to dissolve Belgium and have it become a confederation of regional governments divided along linguistic lines.
The king now begins consultations with political leaders to see who can form a new coalition government.
Commentators say there may be a struggle to find a French-speaking party that will work with the N-VA. However a stalemate would be nothing new for the country. In 2010 Belgium broke the world record, taking 541 days to form a new government.
