Belgian Politics
He became a member of the Socialist Belgian Labour Party in 1920. He was elected deputy in 1932.
In 1935 he entered the cabinet of Paul Van Zeeland as Minister of Transport. In February 1936 he became Minister of Foreign Affairs, serving first under Zeeland and then under his uncle, Paul-Émile Janson. From May 1938 to February 1939 he was Prime Minister for the first time. In 1938, he allowed Herman Van Breda to smuggle the legacy of Edmund Husserl out of Nazi Germany to Belgium through the Belgian Embassy in Berlin.
He was Foreign Minister again from September 1939 until August 1949 under the subsequent Prime Ministers Hubert Pierlot, Achille Van Acker and Camille Huysmans. During this time he twice was appointed Prime Minister as well, first from 13 to 31 March 1946 – the shortest government in Belgian history, and again from March 1947 to August 1949. During his last government, two important pieces of housing legislation were enacted. The De Taeye Act of 1948 organised fiscal rebates, credit facilities, and premiums for social dwellings built either on private or public initiative, while the Brunfaut Act of 1949 established a central budgeting organisation for governmental social housing policy, shifted the financial burden of infrastructural works to the state, and organised the financing of the two National Housing Societies.
He again was foreign minister from April 1954 to June 1958 in the cabinet of Achille Van Acker and from April 1961 to March 1966 in the cabinets of Théo Lefèvre and Pierre Harmel.
Spaak was an advocate of Belgium's "independence policy" before World War II. During the German invasion in May 1940, he fled to France and tried to return during the summer but was prevented by the Germans, even though he was Foreign Minister at the time. Hence, against his wishes he settled in Britain.
Read more about this topic: Paul-Henri Spaak
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