Belgian death reports are exaggerated

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Elections will be held in the United States, Taiwan, India, South Africa, Mexico, and many other countries in 2024. . . Belgium. The elections scheduled for June 9th are shaping up to be one of the most interesting in the country, which hosts the EU headquarters and has just taken over the biannual rotating presidency of the 27-nation bloc. It’s promised. I’m at tony.barber@ft.com.

beer and airlines

To the extent that Belgium’s political situation attracts attention abroad, it is often due to the fact that some commentators believe that the country of less than 12 million people is on the brink of being permanently divided into Dutch-speaking and Francophone regions. This is because there is. Below is James Lindsay, a contributor to the Council on Foreign Relations.

“When Belgians vote next June, they will elect members of their regional, federal and European parliaments. In doing so, they will decide whether or not Belgium will sink into the ashes of history. It may have been decided.”

Belgians themselves sometimes seem to encourage such contemplation, as if to evoke the playfulness of the Belgian-born surrealist artist René Magritte. In 2006, public television station RTBF aired a parody report that the Dutch-speaking region of Flanders had declared independence.

But if the late rock star Frank Zappa is right when he said, “Real countries have beer and airlines,” then Belgium has passed the test. They brew hundreds of different beers and also have an airline called Brussels Airlines, which is obviously owned by Germany’s Lufthansa.

Moreover, Belgium, which gained independence from the Netherlands in 1830, has existed considerably longer than Germany and Italy, which became nation-states in the late 19th century. Some countries in Central and Eastern Europe did not take their current form until 1945 or in the late 20th century.

Language, ideology and economy divide Belgium

Despite its staying power, there is a persistent view that the Belgian state is unusually weak by European standards. The French-speaking regions of Flanders and Wallonia have been seen as becoming increasingly distant since the beginning of Belgium’s broad decentralization along administrative, linguistic, and political lines in 1970.

This trend was amplified by the electoral gains of Vlaams Beran (Flanders Interest), a far-right party essentially dedicated to dividing Belgium and creating an independent Flemish state. (For more information on the origins of Vlaams Belang and Flemish separatism, see this article by Ben Ray.)

As Belgium heads to June elections, Vlaams-Béran is leading in opinion polls both in Flemish and at the federal level. Not far behind is the New Flemish Alliance (N-VA), a conservative nationalist but less radical separatist Flemish party.

The feeling that Flanders and Wallonia belong to two different political circles is reinforced by the fact that the main political parties in Francophone Belgium are centre-left or far-left. Additionally, Flanders is a richer region than Wallonia and is still recovering from the decline of the heavy industry that was a powerhouse until the late 20th century.

In other words, the gap between the two regions is not only linguistic, but also ideological and economic. This trend also persists, as in most cases Flemish parties campaign only in Flanders and Francophone parties only in Wallonia.

Still, I am not convinced that Belgium’s collapse is imminent. Let’s take a look at why Vlaams Belang has the support of the people and why dissolving Belgium is actually much more difficult than it seems at first glance.

Vlaams Beran’s breakthrough

For English speakers, one of the clearest findings on Belgian politics was published in August by the state news agency Belga. The article titled “Elections 2024: The Rise of the Far Right in Belgium” reads:

“Vlaams Belang was founded in 1979 under the name Vlaams Blok. The party was a radical departure from Volksny, a big tent party that advocated greater autonomy for Flanders.”

Wlaams Blok advanced not so much because it advocated Flemish independence as because it campaigned on a harsh anti-immigration and anti-Muslim platform. In 2004, the party was found guilty of violating Belgium’s anti-racism laws and was banned from participating in elections.

The party quickly re-emerged under a new name, Vlaams Beran, but made little progress for a decade until it acquired a new leader, Tom van Grieken, in 2014. Subsequently, the European refugee and migrant crisis of 2015-2016 increased public support for the party. party.

In Belgium’s 2019 elections, Vlaams Beran came in second place in Flanders with around 20% of the vote. This was real progress, but it did not result in a distribution of power, either at the Flemish region or at the federal level. Other parties, including his more moderate nationalist N-VA, prefer to form coalitions with each other; cordon sanitary equipment The battle with Vlaams Beran continues to this day.

Flanders: part of a European trend

Ahead of Belgium’s June elections, the big questions are: cordon sanitary equipment survive? Should a far-right party that also calls for the dissolution of the country be offered a role in a coalition government in Flanders or in Belgium as a whole?

Apart from the issue of separatism, mainstream conservatives and other political parties in many parts of Western Europe have the same problem. In Belgium’s neighboring Netherlands, Geert Wilders’ far-right Freedom Party won an election in November, but the search for a new ruling coalition is underway as most other parties are reluctant to join his government. It’s still lingering.

Austria also has elections scheduled for later this year, with the far-right Freedom Party of the same name leading in opinion polls. Therefore, cordon sanitary equipment The far right has already been active in several coalitions since 2000.

In Sweden, the right-wing nationalist Sweden Democrats are not in power, but have expressed parliamentary support for a centre-right coalition.

Elections will be held in Germany’s three eastern states this year: Brandenburg, Saxony and Thuringia. The far-right party “Alternative for Germany” is the most likely candidate with support of over 30% in all three parties. If the far right were to assume a leading government role in one or more of the country’s 16 states, it would be a significant shift in Germany’s history since 1945, but it is no longer unthinkable. do not have.

Belgian exception

In Belgium, post-election developments may prove less dramatic.

Vlaams Belang hopes to win enough to justify putting a declaration of sovereignty to a vote in the Flemish parliament. He would then negotiate separation from Wallonia. The model was the peaceful “velvet divorce” between the Czech Republic and Slovakia in 1992-1993.

However, judging from current opinion polls, even the combined vote share of Vlaams Beran and the N-VA will be difficult to exceed 50 percent in Flanders. So where does the pro-independence majority come from?

Meanwhile, Vlaams Belan is expected to win more than 20 seats in Belgium’s 150-member parliament, potentially making it the largest party, but by no means powerful enough to sway the conditions over rivals in Flanders and Wallonia. do not have.

What actually happens in Belgium, as in the Netherlands, is that many months after the election will pass while various political leaders look for ways to form a multiparty coalition. It seems to me that it is.

This would be fully in line with Belgian practice. After the 2010 elections, it took 541 days for Belgium to form a government, and the country was ruled by an interim government for an even longer period from December 2018 to October 2020.

A final point is that any attempt to partition Belgium will need to answer the question of what to do with the capital, Brussels, a largely French-speaking city in the middle of Flanders.

Vlaams-Bélang blithely says that Brussels will be incorporated into a new province of Flanders, but as a bilingual city. Indeed, such a measure would face major legal and constitutional hurdles. And as a former resident of Brussels, I have a feeling it won’t go well for the large number of Belgians living in the city either.

What do you think? Will Belgium break up?

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Learn more about this topic

Belgium’s reckoning with its brutal colonial history in Congo — a 2020 report by Neil Mansi, former West Africa bureau chief at the FT

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