Flemish Separatists Win in Belgium

[clearvision]

New York Times:

BRUSSELS — The move to break up Belgium gathered momentum Sunday as separatists won an emphatic election victory in Flanders, the prosperous Dutch-speaking half of the fiercely divided nation.

A stunning electoral success for Bart de Wever’s Flemish nationalist party marks a significant new challenge to the fragile unity of a country where tensions between French and Dutch speakers run deep.

Scheduled to take over the rotating presidency of the European Union in less than three weeks, Belgium will now do so with a caretaker administration and facing months of tortuous negotiations to put together a coalition government.

“We are close to the abyss,” said Lieven De Winter, professor of politics at the Université Catholique de Louvain, who described Mr. De Wever’s win as a landslide. “Whether we are five meters or five centimeters away is difficult to say. But Belgians are at a crossroads where they are making a choice on whether they want to live together or not.”

Mr. De Wever claimed victory Sunday, saying he had won around 30 percent of the vote in Flanders, the northern part of the country.

Television projections suggested his New Flemish Alliance would also be the biggest single party in Belgium over all and could take 30 of the 150 seats in Parliament, ahead of the French-speaking Socialists with 26. Belgium has separate Dutch- and French-speaking parties.

Though this is not the first time Flemish separatists have prospered here, Mr. De Wever’s party has succeeded in making the cause of independence respectable. Other separatist parties like the Vlaams Belang were identified with the extremist and xenophobic far right, and that limited their appeal.

By contrast, Mr. De Wever is a mainstream politician who argues for the gradual death of Belgium, rather than immediate dismemberment.

“We do not want a revolution,” Mr. De Wever said in Brussels last week. “We do not want to declare Flanders independent overnight. But we do believe in a gradual evolution.”

The next coalition will have to agree both on spending cuts and on a way to give even more power to the regional authorities.

“The negotiations to form a new government will be even more difficult than in 2007,” said Mr. De Winter, the politics professor, “and in 2007 they took nearly seven months.”

A country of 10.6 million people, Belgium is no stranger to political instability. In 2007, it took 192 days to form a temporary government and, since those elections, the current prime minister, Yves Leterme, has held the post twice and offered his resignation three times.

For a brief interlude as prime minister, Herman Van Rompuy calmed tensions, but he left the job in December to take up the European Union’s new presidential post.

Created in 1830, Belgium’s history contains many of the seeds of today’s difficulties because French-speakers dominated the country for much of the last century.

Modern day Belgium is divided between Flanders, which is more populous, and Wallonia, the more economically disadvantaged, French-speaking southern portion. Brussels, a largely French-speaking city, is the official capital of Flanders, and there is also a small German-speaking community.

The language divide is exacerbated by economic tensions because Flanders feels it subsidizes the south.

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OK sounds important... but who gets to sell the chocolate?

[Pepper]

Clearvision

 

One's language is a fundamental unifier.

 

That is one reason that relations will continue to fester in Canada as well as here.

 

That is why the EEC will eventually fail.

 

- - three cents - - Monday special.

[clearvision]

We have a French speaking issue here?

[NCTexan]

Three distinct languages and non-integrated societies in Belgium... a country about the size of Maryland.

 

Flemish...

Walloon...

Arabic...

 

Big Problems in a Little Country. This is truly an EU microcosm.

[Pepper]

NCTexan

 

They had problems enough without you bringing in the Ay-rabs.

I had neglected that ingredient in their toxic concoction.