Belgium’s divide widens after separatist poll win

BELGIUM faced political and economic limbo yesterday as right-wing Flemish separatist and French-speaking Socialist election winners sized each other up going into entrenched talks.

With markets sniffing a deepening public finance crisis at the heart of Europe following sea-change results from Sunday’s elections, observers doubted whether the clash of political, economic and linguistic ideologies could even be bridged over the coming months.

King Albert II began the protracted process of meeting party leaders from Belgium’s Dutch-speaking majority in affluent Flanders and the poorer francophones of Wallonia, where polls combine to produce federal Belgian results.