Dylan, guest of honour at the MR's Estivales in Waterloo, shared her perspective on the major challenges facing our society: freedom, responsibility and the future of our country. Below is the transcript of her address.
Estivales in Waterloo
6 September 2026
Thank you so much, friends. Thank you for inviting me to speak at the opening of your political year. It is a true honour. Being here with you also feels like coming home.
For 180 years, liberalism in Belgium has been an organised political force. For 180 years, liberals have done everything they can to keep Belgium free. And under the name Mouvement Réformateur, you have played an important role as that liberal force for almost 25 years. I hope you will continue to do so for many years to come.
Just think of everything that has changed in those 180 years of political liberalism. Borders shifted, kingdoms disappeared, Europe fought wars and then built a union. The right to vote was introduced and expanded. People gained rights that were once unimaginable. Liberal values were fought for: a free society in your country and in ours, in which everyone is free to be themselves, in which people are free to think for themselves and express an opinion, and therefore also have the right to disagree, even to disagree profoundly.
And to do so in this remarkable place, at the foot of the Lion's Mound. From here, we can survey the entire landscape: the roads, the farms, the land around us. But we also know that this mound did not exist at the time of the Battle of Waterloo. It was built only years later. The people who were here then did not have the overview we have today. They could see only part of the world, and yet they had to make decisions.
It is hard to imagine a better metaphor for politics. Dear friends, for me, a mature free society begins with a simple principle: not “I want to win,” not even “I want to be proved right,” but “I want to make this country better and stronger.”
How we want to do that, we are allowed to disagree about vigorously. In fact, we should. That is what is special about a free society. It is a place where governments can be challenged, where science can correct us, where a journalist can expose a minister, and where a parliament can bring down a government.
Whoever you are, whatever your background or position, we can disagree fundamentally, enter into debate and challenge each other on the substance. I call that our freedom machine: a machine that turns disagreement into debate, that gives new ideas room to breathe, that allows mistakes to be corrected and that turns power into responsibility.
A dictatorship can decree that reality is different. A democracy, in the end, can only function by facing reality. But that freedom machine needs fuel: the freedom to be able to talk about anything, even when it is uncomfortable, even when it causes friction, even when the facts do not fit what you would particularly prefer to believe.
Because that is precisely where the real test of a free society begins. What do we do when someone says something we would rather not hear? In recent years, I have seen the same mechanism appear more and more often in our Western societies.
First, we deny the problem. Then, we play it down or make it so complicated that no one is responsible anymore or even wants to touch it. And if none of that works, we discredit the person who points out the problem. Then it is no longer the message that is attacked, but the messenger.
And that might well be the easiest way to win an uncomfortable debate. If you do not want to discuss what somebody is saying, cast suspicion on the person saying it. You stick a label on them. You attribute a motive to them. You turn a substantive disagreement into a judgment about someone's character. Before you know it, the conversation is suddenly no longer about the problem, but about the person who raises it.
But, of course, that does not make reality disappear. And let me tell you: this is more than intellectual poverty. It is dangerous for our democracies, because this is how the norm gradually shifts. We no longer start by asking whether something is true, but by asking who is saying it, with what intention we think they might have, and what their statement supposedly says about them. Only then do we decide whether it should be allowed to be said at all.
A misguided moral framework threatens to emerge, in which a kind of virtue police decides which facts make it through the political filter and are therefore open for discussion. But if facts can no longer be freely investigated and discussed, we ultimately stop governing on the basis of reality and start governing on the basis of emotions about that reality. Then truth becomes politically off-limits.
I have experienced plenty of examples of this myself. You will probably have some of your own as well. How many times over the past ten years have I been asked how, as a former refugee, I can support a strict asylum policy?
Because I was once a refugee, I was apparently supposed to support an unlimited asylum policy. Apparently, my identity determines what I am supposed to think. And the moment I think something different, you no longer have to listen to my arguments. It is enough to call me into question as a messenger.
At times, it almost seems to be a new norm: your identity is free as long as you display the politically correct version of it. This is not merely lazy thinking. It is, to me, a peculiar idea of freedom. It is unacceptable that opinions should be constrained by your skin colour, your background, or a label someone else puts on you.
I fled to the Netherlands with my parents 41 years ago. We were offered a safe place when we needed one. I was given opportunities and I took them. Today, I have the privilege of standing here in front of you. That is precisely why I support a strict policy. I want us to dare to make distinctions between people to whom we want to offer a safe place and people of whom we are entitled to say that they have no right to stay.
That is not denying my background; it is taking responsibility, so that the seven-year-old girls of today also have the chance to build a safe life here, in a country that can cope with their arrival. In a free, liberal country where freedom is something everyone participates in, a country where everyone proudly upholds that freedom.
I have another example for you. Before I entered national politics, I served on the Amsterdam City Council. For years, I fought hard there to tackle street harassment, because every woman, every Jew and every gay person deserves the freedom to walk down the street without being hissed at, intimidated or followed.
But the resistance was fierce. Not because the problem did not exist (it was far too visible for that) but because some parties were terrified of what research into the perpetrators might reveal. Suppose it showed that perpetrators had a migration background. Suddenly, even raising the problem itself became suspect.
That was literally given to me as a reason to vote against tackling this problem. They tried to make the case that our intent was to expose these perpetrators simply because they might be migrants. And so people preferred to talk around reality.
It took years and years before a serious approach was introduced. Years spent carefully avoiding the elephant in the room. And the people who suffered from it gained nothing from that political cost. That is exactly why this is so damaging. Victims do not disappear because their story is politically uncomfortable. Numbers do not change because we dislike the outcome. And a problem does not solve itself because we have labelled the person who points it out.
Your party dared to say that the system in which unemployment benefits could, in principle, continue indefinitely was unsustainable. You rightly argued that solidarity can only endure if we also make it sustainable for the future.
But instead of debating whether the analysis was correct and what a sensible reform would look like, you were told that you wanted to punish the unemployed and dismantle social security. But you stood your ground. And by now, the duration of unemployment benefits in Belgium has been limited. Not because social security is unimportant, but precisely because you take responsibility for its future.
In the Netherlands, we too face necessary reforms to our social security benefits, and they too will lead to uncomfortable debates. That is politics. The same applies to both our parties. We will not be told that we do not care about the most vulnerable people in society. We know the opposite is true.
We write no one off. We believe in people's strength. And we certainly will not allow ourselves to be confined to what others think we ought to believe. Especially when major social challenges demand solutions, when clear and sometimes painful choices have to be made, this asks something extra of us as liberals.
The choices we make on migration, security, prosperity and social security will determine whether our countries are still free, strong and prosperous tomorrow. That is why we must lead the debate, put forward new ideas, dare to swim against the tide and say things as they are. Not only once a position becomes popular, but when it is necessary.
And let me make one thing absolutely clear: this mechanism of avoiding debates by calling the messenger into question is not confined to the left alone. The far right can do it just as easily.
As Minister of Defence, I see every day the threats posed by Russia. I see sabotage in Europe, attempts to divide or infiltrate our societies, and Russian interference. Putin is willing to use violence to expand his power, but that reality is inconvenient for some parties too.
And so Russian sabotage suddenly becomes a way of dismissing the elite. Russian interference becomes NATO propaganda, and anyone who wants to continue supporting Ukraine is branded a warmonger or a Zelensky fanboy. The mechanism is exactly the same: do not examine the facts, do not challenge the arguments, just cast suspicion on the messenger.
And that is exactly where the democratic danger lies. We have something worth fighting for: our freedom. For the first time in decades, we once again face an enemy that has both the power and the will to undermine our free, liberal societies.
Especially now, we cannot afford to subordinate reality to whichever worldview happens to suit us best. Because facing reality is not an end in itself; it is the precondition for solving problems. And if there are parts of that reality we refuse to investigate, there are very concrete consequences.
When you can no longer analyse perpetrators, you cannot understand patterns. When people can no longer voice their concerns, you cannot improve policy. When politicians are afraid to name certain facts, you get worse political decisions.
When, for example, concerns about migration are enough to earn someone the label of racist, you no longer have to examine whether there might be something behind those concerns. The label has replaced the argument, and the messenger has been discredited. End of discussion.
But a democracy cannot function if we first decide which facts are politically acceptable and which version of reality we are willing to use. Facts, in themselves, do not dictate what political conclusion you should draw from them. Liberals, socialists, conservatives and greens can then disagree profoundly about that conclusion. Of course, that is politics. But we must be willing to look at the same reality.
Otherwise, we are no longer governing on the basis of facts, but on the basis of emotions. Meanwhile, the problems people face in their daily lives simply continue to exist. And, of course, people at home notice that too. That is when cynicism takes hold.
Then you hear people say: “They do not want to know. They know, but they will not say it.” Or: “Apparently, I am not allowed to say what I think either.” That cynicism ultimately eats away at the roots of our democracy. It can only function if people can trust that reality itself is part of our political debate.
In a democracy, truth can never be off-limits, especially when it is uncomfortable. Otherwise, we will create space for extremists and populists, for parties that can say: “You see, we are the only ones who actually dare to say it.”
A mature democracy does not need to fear an uncomfortable message. We must trust that our democracies can handle it. Freedom of expression also means that someone else has the freedom to tell me that I am wrong.
So fight an argument with an argument. Explain why my analysis is wrong. Bring different figures, better research and facts to show that I am mistaken. If you genuinely believe an analysis is wrong, you do not need to attack the messenger. We have a much stronger weapon: the fact.
That is how a mature democracy is supposed to work. That is why, as serious political parties, we do not need to become harsher. We need to become more mature. A strong debate makes a democracy stronger, and that is our freedom machine at work.
Dear friends, 180 years ago, your liberal ancestors did not know what Belgium would look like today. They did not know the problems we face now. They did not know Putin. They could hardly have imagined what our modern society would look like.
Like the people who once walked here, they did not have the overview we have right now. In hindsight, and today, we still do not have an overview of our own future. We too can only see part of the whole.
And that is precisely why we need free people who are free to think; people who talk to one another and challenge one another; people who dare to name problems; people who are willing to change their minds when the facts prove otherwise; people who are not afraid to face things that contradict their own convictions.
And then we need politicians who dare and are willing to listen to all these people; who do not start listening only when you behave in the way they think you should because of your skin colour, your class, your religion or your background; and who never discredit the messengers simply because they dislike the message.
That is why liberals are indispensable, here in Belgium and in the Netherlands. That is why, in the coming parliamentary year, you, like my party, are focusing on how we can ensure that people in our countries can continue to live freely.
They must have the freedom to build something for themselves and move forward. Work and enterprise must pay more again, with lower taxes and less red tape. Families and businesses must not be suffocated by excessively high energy prices. And people must be able to trust the government to take its most important tasks seriously: keeping us as safe as possible.
These are issues that directly affect people's freedom. Especially now, we liberals must fight the battle of ideas over the choices that will shape our future.
That is why I hope the MR will continue, for at least the next 180 years, to do what liberals stand for above all. I hope that, for the next 180 years, your party will continue to fight for our freedom.
The world needs us, liberals, to make sure the torch of freedom never goes out. We liberals understand that standing up for freedom and actively safeguarding it is a task that every generation must take on again and again.
And our freedom machine will keep running only if all of us dare to keep it running, even when it causes friction, especially when it causes friction.
Thank you so much.
MR political re-entry: French translation of Dilan Yeşilgöz-Zegerius's speech
Thank you so much, dear friends. Thank you for inviting me to speak at the opening of your political year. It is a true honour. Being with you also gives me the feeling of coming home.
For 180 years, liberalism has been an organised political force in Belgium. For 180 years, liberals have done everything in their power to preserve Belgium's freedom. Under the name Mouvement Réformateur, you have embodied this liberal force for almost 25 years and have played an essential role in it. I hope you will continue to do so for many years to come.
One need only think of everything that has changed over these 180 years of political liberalism. Borders were redrawn, kingdoms disappeared, Europe went through war before building a Union. The right to vote was introduced, then extended. Citizens gained rights once unimaginable. We have fought to defend our liberal values: those of a free society, in your country as in ours, where everyone can be themselves, think freely, express their opinion and, as a result, sometimes disagree profoundly with others.
We are gathered in a remarkable place, at the foot of the Lion's Mound. From here, we can take in the whole landscape: the roads, the farms and the land around us. But we also know that this mound did not exist at the time of the Battle of Waterloo. It was built years later. The people who stood here at the time did not have the overview we have today. They could only see part of the world and yet still had to make decisions.
It is hard to imagine a better metaphor for politics. To me, a free and mature society rests on a very simple principle. It is not about wanting to win, or even to be right. It is about wanting to make the country better and stronger.
We can disagree profoundly about how to achieve that. We must even do so. That is precisely what gives a free society its value. It is a society in which the government can be challenged, in which science can correct us, in which a journalist can expose a minister's failings, and in which a parliament can bring down a government.
Whatever our background, our path or our position, we must be able to disagree fundamentally, debate and engage with one another on substance. That is what I call our freedom machine. It turns disagreement into debate, gives space to new ideas, makes it possible to correct mistakes, and turns power into responsibility.
A dictatorship can decree that reality is different. A democracy, however, can only function sustainably by facing reality head-on. But this freedom machine needs fuel: the freedom to speak about everything, even when it is uncomfortable, when it creates tension, or when the facts do not match what we would prefer to believe.
That is where the real test of a free society begins. What do we do when someone says something we would rather not hear? In recent years, I have seen the same mechanism spread more and more in our Western societies.
First, the problem is denied. Then it is downplayed or made so complex that no one feels responsible anymore and no one wants to tackle it. And if that is not enough, the person who exposed the problem is discredited. It is then no longer the message that is attacked, but the person carrying it.
That is perhaps the easiest way to win an uncomfortable debate. When people do not want to discuss what someone has said, they cast suspicion on that person. They attach a label. They ascribe an intention. They turn a substantive disagreement into a judgment. Very quickly, the discussion is no longer about the problem, but about the person who raised it.
Yet reality does not disappear because of this. And I can tell you: this is not merely a form of intellectual poverty. It is a danger to our democracies, because this is how the norm gradually shifts. We no longer start by asking whether something is true. We first ask who is saying it, what intentions we attribute to them, and what their words supposedly reveal about them. Only afterwards do we decide whether it may be said at all.
This risks giving rise to a distorted moral framework. A kind of virtue police would decide which facts are allowed through the political filter to be discussed. But when facts can no longer be freely examined and debated, we stop governing on the basis of reality. We then govern on the basis of the emotions that reality provokes. Truth becomes politically forbidden.
I myself have experienced many examples of this. You have, no doubt, too. How many times over the past ten years have I been asked how, as a former refugee, I could support a strict asylum policy?
Because I had been a refugee, I was apparently expected to defend a borderless asylum policy. My identity was thus supposed to determine what I was allowed to think. Once I thought otherwise, it would no longer be necessary to listen to my arguments. It would be enough to cast doubt on the person making them.
Sometimes this seems to have become a new norm: you are free to assert your identity, provided you present a politically correct version of it. This is not merely lazy thinking. It is a strange notion of freedom. It is unacceptable for a person's opinions to be limited by their skin colour, their background, or the label others attach to them.
I fled to the Netherlands with my parents 41 years ago. We found a safe place at the moment we needed it. I was given opportunities and I seized them. Today, I have the privilege of standing before you. That is precisely why I support a strict policy. I want us to have the courage to distinguish between the people we wish to protect and those we are entitled to say cannot stay.
This is not denying my past. It is taking responsibility so that today's seven-year-old girls can also build a safe life here, in a country capable of bearing their arrival. In a free and liberal country, where freedom is everyone's concern and everyone defends it with pride.
I would like to give you another example. Before entering national politics, I sat on Amsterdam's city council. For years, I fought a relentless battle against street harassment, because every woman, every Jew and every gay person should be able to walk down the street without being catcalled, intimidated or followed.
But the resistance was strong. Not because the problem did not exist, it was far too visible for that. It stemmed from the fact that some parties feared what research into the perpetrators might reveal. What if it showed the perpetrators had a migration background? Suddenly, merely raising the problem became suspect.
That is precisely the argument used against me to refuse to tackle this problem. People tried to suggest that our aim was to single out perpetrators because they might have an immigrant background. So instead, reality is conveniently sidestepped.
It took years before a serious approach was put in place. Years during which the core problem was carefully avoided. But the people suffering from it gained nothing from that political calculation. That is why this attitude is so harmful. Victims do not disappear because their story is politically uncomfortable. Figures do not change because their results are unwelcome. And a problem is not solved by attaching a label to the person who raises it.
Your party dared to say that a system in which unemployment benefits could, in principle, be paid indefinitely was not sustainable. You were right to state that solidarity can only endure if we make it sustainable for the future.
But instead of debating the merits of this analysis and the shape a reasonable reform should take, you were accused of wanting to punish the unemployed and dismantle social security. Yet you held firm. Today, the duration of unemployment benefits in Belgium has been limited. Not because social security is secondary, but precisely because you are taking responsibility for its future.
In the Netherlands, we too face necessary reforms to our social benefits. These too will give rise to uncomfortable debates. That is politics. The same applies to both our parties. We will not let anyone say that we do not care about the most vulnerable people in society. We know the opposite is true.
We give up on no one. We believe in the strength of individuals. And we will certainly not accept being confined to what others think we should believe. When the great challenges facing our society demand solutions, and clear, sometimes painful choices must be made, this demands even more of us liberals.
The choices we make on migration, security, prosperity and social protection will determine whether our countries remain free, strong and prosperous tomorrow. That is why we must lead the debate, put forward new ideas, dare to go against the tide and say things as they are. Not only when a position becomes popular, but when it is necessary.
I also want to be very clear: this mechanism of avoiding a debate by attacking the person carrying a message is not the sole preserve of the left. The far right can just as easily resort to it.
As Minister of Defence, I see every day the threats posed by Russia. I see the sabotage across Europe, the attempts to divide or infiltrate our societies, and Russian interference. Putin is prepared to use violence to expand his power. But this reality also disturbs certain parties.
So Russian sabotage suddenly becomes a way to discredit the elites. Russian interference is presented as NATO propaganda. Anyone who wants to continue supporting Ukraine is labelled a warmonger or a Zelensky fan. The mechanism is exactly the same: don't examine the facts, don't discuss the arguments, and cast suspicion on the person speaking.
That is where the democratic danger lies. We have something worth defending: our freedom. For the first time in decades, we are once again facing an enemy with both the capacity and the will to weaken our free and liberal societies.
More than ever, we cannot afford to bend reality to fit the worldview that suits us best. Facing reality is not an end in itself. It is the necessary condition for solving problems. If parts of that reality can no longer be examined, the consequences are very concrete.
When we can no longer analyse the perpetrators of offences, we can no longer understand trends. When citizens can no longer voice their concerns, we cannot improve public policy. When politicians are afraid to name certain facts, political decisions become worse.
If, for example, expressing concerns about migration is enough to have someone labelled a racist, then there is no longer any need to find out what lies behind those concerns. The label replaces the argument. The messenger is discredited. And the discussion stops there.
But a democracy cannot function if we decide in advance which facts are politically acceptable and which version of reality we are willing to look at. Facts alone do not dictate the political conclusion drawn from them. Liberals, socialists, conservatives and greens can disagree profoundly on that conclusion. That is politics. But we must agree to look at the same reality.
Otherwise, we no longer govern on the basis of facts, but on the basis of emotions. Meanwhile, the problems people face every day continue to exist. And citizens notice. That is when cynicism sets in.
You hear: “They don't want to know. They know, but they don't want to say it.” Or: “Apparently, I'm not allowed to say what I think either.” This cynicism ultimately erodes the foundations of our democracy. Democracy can only function if citizens trust that reality itself is part of the political debate.
In a democracy, the truth can never be forbidden, especially when it is uncomfortable. Otherwise, we create space for extremists and populists, for parties who can say: “You see, we are the only ones who dare to say it.”
A mature democracy should not fear an uncomfortable message. We must trust in the ability of our democracies to deal with it. Freedom of expression also means that another person is free to tell me I am wrong.
You must answer an argument with another argument. You must explain why an analysis would be wrong. You must bring other figures, better research and facts to show that I am mistaken. When one genuinely believes an analysis is flawed, there is no need to attack the person putting it forward. We have a far stronger weapon: the facts.
That is how a mature democracy must work. That is why, as serious political parties, we do not need to become harsher. We need to become more mature. A robust debate makes a democracy stronger. That is how our freedom machine works.
Dear friends, 180 years ago, your liberal ancestors did not know what Belgium would look like today. They did not know the challenges we face today. They did not know Putin. They could hardly have imagined our modern society.
Like those who once walked here, they did not have the overview we have today. And we ourselves do not have a complete view of our own future. We only see part of it.
That is precisely why we need free citizens, free to think. We need people who talk to and challenge one another, who dare to name problems, who are willing to change their minds when the facts show they are wrong, and who are not afraid to face what contradicts their own convictions.
We also need politicians who dare to listen to all these voices and who are willing to do so. Politicians who do not only listen to people who fit what they think they should be based on their skin colour, social class, religion or origin. Politicians who never discredit someone simply because they dislike the message that person carries.
That is why liberals are indispensable, here in Belgium as much as at home in the Netherlands. That is also why, during this parliamentary year, you are focusing, like my party, on an essential question: how do we ensure that the people of our countries can continue to live freely?
They must be able to build their future and move forward. Work and entrepreneurship must once again be rewarded more, through lower taxes and less red tape. Families and businesses must not be strangled by excessive energy prices. And citizens must be able to rely on a state that takes its most important missions seriously, starting with their safety.
These challenges directly affect the freedom of citizens. More than ever, we liberals must lead the battle of ideas over the choices that will shape our future.
I therefore hope that the MR will, for at least the next 180 years, continue to defend what lies at the heart of liberalism. I hope that your party will continue to fight for our freedom for the next 180 years.
The world needs us liberals so that the flame of freedom never goes out. We know that defending freedom and actively protecting it is a mission that every generation must take up again, over and over.
Our freedom machine will only keep working if each of us dares to keep it alive, even when that creates tension, and especially when it creates tension.
Thank you very much.