Belgian unity in doubt as the king calls off government talks

FOR years now Belgians have been compromising with one another in an effort to keep the country together. They have five parliaments and a power sharing arrangement that would baffle the best mathematician.

But now, more than three months after their last general election and 177 years after the country was invented, it’s looking as though the game is up.

The king — whom some say is the only thing holding the country together — two weeks ago called off the long and fruitless talks between politicians trying to form a government.

The northern part of the country speaks a Dutch dialect — Flemish — while the south — Walloon — speaks French. But it’s not just their languages that divide them. Culturally both communities are closer to their origins as the line through the centre of Belgium dividing the French (Walloons) from the Dutch (Flems) marks the fault line between the Northern Protestant Europeans and the Mediterranean Catholic Europeans.

The Flems with 60% of the 10 million population are in the majority but under the constitution must share power equally with the minority French.

Also, the prime minister must be fluent in both languages and the government leader is invariably a Flem. And the would be PM, Flemish Christian Democrat leader Yves Leterme, got elected on a promise of more autonomy for Flanders.

Because the grievances between the two communities are historic — the French were the ruling class and Flemish was banned — the modern day grievances are now mainly economic.

The Flemish have become the nation’s entrepreneurs, subsidising the Walloons to at least €2,000 a head per year because the source of their [Walloon] wealth — coal and steel — went out of fashion and has left them with 20% unemployment.

But despite the prospect of ending up with a country the size of Cork, both parts could divide without too much change because so much power has been devolved to their parliaments already.

However, the fly in the ointment is Brussels. It’s smack bang in the middle of Flanders, full of beautiful Flemish architecture and flowing in Flemish beer but the majority of its population are French speakers.

The French argue the Flems can have the world’s diamond capital, Antwerp, as their capital but they need Brussels.

The Flems, however, have a majority in many of Brussels’s communes that ring the centre that encompasses the EU quarter and the tourist attractions.

Legally the capital is bilingual with street signs, film sub-titles and even advertisements having to be in both languages. But the communes and many of the regions set their own rules and have been linguistically cleansing them for some time now.

There are lots of horror stories about how this is working in practice — French speaking children in a Flemish hospital being unable to communicate; schools where teachers must pass a language test in Flemish even though the school language is French; and couples trying to adopt in Flanders being rejected because they are not fluent in Flemish.

The king — and most others — hope the new negotiations will take some of the heat out of the row. It would need to, as in March, 80% of citizens said there would be a Belgium in 10 years time. But last week, 45% of the Flems and 20% of the Walloons said they wanted the country to break up.