Citizens' Movement for Change (, , MCC) is a
Christian-democratic
Christian democracy is an ideology inspired by Christian social teaching to respond to the challenges of contemporary society and politics.
Christian democracy has drawn mainly from Catholic social teaching and neo-scholasticism, as well a ...
political party
A political party is an organization that coordinates candidates to compete in a particular area's elections. It is common for the members of a party to hold similar ideas about politics, and parties may promote specific political ideology, ...
in the
French Community of Belgium
In Belgium, the French Community (, , CFB) refers to one of the three constituent constitutional linguistic communities. Since 2011, the French Community has used the name Wallonia-Brussels Federation (, , FWB), which is controversial because ...
founded by
Gérard Deprez in 1998.
Deprez was the leader of the Francophone
Christian Social Party (PSC) from 1982 to 1995. He left the PSC, because he had failed to carry through his idea of forging a confederation of the PSC with the
Liberal Reformist Party (PRL). Moreover, he had been discontent with the election of
Charles-Ferdinand Nothomb as party leader. The last trigger to form a new party was the popular outrage at the government's mishandling of the controversy around the pedophile serial killer
Marc Dutroux. The MCC immediately joined the alliance of the PRL and the regionalist
Democratic Front of the Francophones (FDF) and ran on a joint PRL-FDF-MCC list for the elections in 1999. Deprez was elected to the European Parliament and sat with the group of the
European People's Party
The European People's Party (EPP) is a European political party with Christian democracy, Christian democratic, liberal conservatism, liberal-conservative, and conservative member parties. A transnational organisation, it is composed of other p ...
(EPP-ED). The MCC supported the "purple-green" government coalition of Liberals, Socialists and Greens, while the PSC, for the first time in 50 years, was sent into opposition. PRL, FDF and MCC became components of the
Reformist Movement in 2002.
In the
2004 European Parliamentary Election it elected one
MEP (G. Deprez) on the MR ticket. This time, he chose to sit with his liberal allies in the
Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe (ALDE) Group. The MCC became part of the pan-European
European Democratic Party (EDP).
See also
*
Political parties in Belgium
*
Politics of Belgium
External links
Official website
References
{{Belgian political parties
Francophone political parties in Belgium
Centrist parties in Belgium
Christian democratic parties in Belgium
European Democratic Party
1998 establishments in Belgium
Political parties established in 1998