Belgian MEP Yvan Verougstraete: ‘Afraid of Getting Bored’
Yvan Verougstraete, the president of Belgium’s centrist Les Engagés party and a Member of the European Parliament, has a confession to make: he is afraid of getting bored. In a candid interview with La Libre Belgique, the former serial entrepreneur revealed that he gives himself approximately seven more years in politics before pivoting again — potentially toward teaching.
From McKinsey to Medi-Market to Politics
Verougstraete’s career reads less like a traditional political biography and more like a business school case study. Before entering politics, he was a consultant at McKinsey, operational director at Delitraiteur at age 27, founder of Divine Cuisine, and — most notably — the founder and CEO of Medi-Market, a pharmacy and parapharmacy chain that disrupted the Belgian healthcare sector.
According to his Wikipedia biography, Verougstraete was born in Ixelles in 1975 and became the youngest municipal councilor in Belgium at just 18, affiliated with the PSC (the predecessor of today’s Les Engagés). He went on to earn a law degree from UCLouvain and a master’s in commerce from Vlerick Business School before building his entrepreneurial empire.
Medi-Market, founded in 2014, became a lightning rod for controversy. The Order of Pharmacists took the company to court in 2015 over alleged confusion between pharmacies and parapharmacies. By 2019, the courts had confirmed that the Order had violated competition law, and Verougstraete was named “Manager of the Year” by Trends-Tendances magazine.
A Political Rise in Record Time
After stepping down as CEO of Medi-Market in 2021, Verougstraete joined Les Engagés and became vice-president in 2022. In the June 2024 European elections, he won a seat in the European Parliament with 63,530 preference votes. He was subsequently elected Vice-President of the ITRE Committee (Industry, Research, Energy), where he sits with the Renew Europe group.
When Maxime Prévot left the party presidency to become a minister in the Arizona coalition government led by Prime Minister Bart De Wever, Verougstraete stepped in as interim president in February 2025. By April 2025, he had been elected president with an overwhelming 89.3% of the vote.
The Seven-Year Horizon
The headline-grabbing moment of the La Libre interview is Verougstraete’s self-imposed timeline. “I’m afraid of getting bored,” he said — a statement that reflects his entrepreneurial restlessness rather than any dissatisfaction with his current roles. He sees politics as a chapter, not a lifelong career, and is already contemplating what comes next: teaching.
This is particularly striking given the context. Verougstraete has been at the center of a fierce education reform controversy in recent weeks. In June 2026, he faced significant backlash over budget cuts and reforms supported by the Arizona coalition. On June 16, he was hit in the face with a whipped cream pie by a carpentry teacher in Florenville protesting the reforms. Despite the incident, Verougstraete has defended the reforms as “difficult but necessary,” as RTBF reported.
What It Means for Les Engagés
Verougstraete’s stated intention to leave politics in seven years raises questions about the future of Les Engagés. The party, which rebranded from CDH in 2022 to signal renewal, is currently part of the Arizona coalition alongside MR, Vooruit, CD&V, and Open VLD. As a centrist force in a reformist government, the party must balance fiscal responsibility with social concerns.
His background as a disruptive entrepreneur — someone who built a pharmacy chain that took on the establishment and won — shapes his political approach. He represents a new breed of politician in Belgium: one who brings private-sector energy and a willingness to challenge entrenched interests.
A Different Kind of Politician
What makes Verougstraete unusual is not just his resume but his self-awareness about the temporariness of political life. Most party presidents plan for the long haul; Verougstraete is already planning his exit. His potential pivot to teaching — the very sector at the heart of the current controversy — would be a remarkable full-circle moment.
As he told La Libre, the fear of boredom is a driving force. For a man who has been a consultant, an operational director, a food entrepreneur, a pharmacy disruptor, and now a party president and MEP, the question is not whether he will move on, but what he will build next.