“I think they [Anuna De Wever and Kyra Gantois] have seen what I’ve been talking about for the past two years,” Flemish Bouwmeester Leo Van Broeck subtly remarked on the programme De afspraak on 31 January 2019. No, embracing Youth4Climate and the climate strike movement was by no means opportunism, but had been a long time in the making. More than any of his predecessors, Van Broeck has elevated sustainability, biodiversity and global warming to central themes of architectural quality.

Yet Van Broeck was momentarily thrown off balance on *De afspraak*. Moral philosopher Patrick Loobuyck found the collaboration between the Bouwmeester and the forest protesters very commendable, but swore by the ‘primacy of politics’. It is a position that the n-va has been promoting for years – Minister-President Geert Bourgeois referred to it as the ‘primacy of politics’ – to establish a clear hierarchy in decision-making between the preparatory work of government administrations and the final decision of the executive branch.