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.

While the biggest issue is what kind of country Belgium is to become, with the Flemish pushing for the loosest of federal ties to be retained, much of the fighting will revolve around how to fix state finances.

“If our country stays several months without a government, it’s our credit rating that will suffer,” warned Paul Soete, head of Belgium’s technology employers federation Agoria.

“Belgium’s public net debt is likely to go through 100% of GDP within the next year or so, and (the federal state’s) financing requirements are among the largest in Europe this year and next,” Frankfurt-based Goldman Sachs economist Erik Nielsen said.

Official results released yesterday backed up New Flemish Alliance (NVA) leader Bart De Wever’s victory declaration.

Republican De Wever, 39, ultimately wants independence, and in the first instance, full fiscal control. His party won the largest number of seats, 27 in the 150-member lower Belgian federal house, as well as the largest share of the vote in Flanders – 28.2%.

The Socialists secured 26 seats, with 36.6% of the vote across the other two federal regions, Wallonia and officially bilingual Brussels, well ahead of Leterme’s Christian Democrats, who picked up 17 seats on 17.6%.

Belgium has had four governments and three prime ministers since its last general election in 2007.

De Wever says he does not want the job, leaving Socialist leader Elio Di Rupo as favourite to become the first francophone premier since the 1970s.