ADP invites everyone to Belgium

LA Times - November 13, 2007 (still equally applicable to today)

BRUSSELS -- To the uninitiated, the existential crisis splitting Belgium down the middle these days might seem like a (very) civilized war as told by Dr. Seuss, with the French-speaking Walloons on one side and the Dutch-speaking Flemings on the other.

The more prosperous Dutch-speakers in Flanders in the north want to shake off their relatively poor French-speaking neighbors in Wallonia to the south.

After 177 years, Belgium, with its 10.5 million people, would disappear into two nations, with one proposal turning Brussels into a capital district akin to Washington, D.C.

After decades of snubs and bitter grudges, the two halves of Belgium have separate languages, political parties, schools and media. Some claim that even the birds of Flanders and Wallonia sing in different languages.

These divisions have thrown the country into a political limbo that is 5 months old and counting. Since June 10 national elections, warring factions from each region have been unable to form a coalition government, with the main hurdle being Flemish demands for increased autonomy. The last time Belgium was in a similar crisis was in 1988, and it took 148 days to form a government. It's been a week longer than that now, and counting.

For the time being, the outgoing prime minister is sticking around to make sure taxes are collected and bills get paid. And King Albert II has stepped in to appoint a mediator, but nobody believes the 73-year-old monarch, best known for his motorcycle and French villa before he came to power, can hold the country together. (and having curious relations with minors back in the 70's)

In the meantime, outsiders seem to find amusement in the predicament of the little country famous for chocolate, French fries and producing 500 kinds of beers. An Australian journalist insisted the country had to stay together because who'd want "Flemish chocolates," or to be anything "Walloon," the "Oompa-loompa of national adjectives"? This fall, "Belgium, a kingdom in three parts," was listed for sale on EBay but was quickly pulled after a bid came in at $13 million.

If Belgium has any image internationally, it is as the home of the 27-member European Union, founded 50 years ago to transcend just this kind of Balkanization that plunged Europe into two world wars in the last century. So no one has missed the irony that over the half a century the EU came together, the country that plays host to its capital has spiraled further apart.

[...]

Resentments date back to the founding of Belgium in 1830, when French was fatefully imposed as the official language on a Flemish majority. By the first half of the 20th century, the French-speaking elite dominated by denying Flemings many basic rights such as an education in their own language. During World War I, Flemish soldiers were sent into battle by French-speaking officers, and many died because they didn't understand their orders.

Bourgeois looks upon those deaths as a turning point when "in the trenches, common Flemings united with Flemish intellectuals and became aware of their discrimination and the injustice of the whole situation."

Belgian identity lost further ground in the 1960s when the steel- and coal-based industries of Wallonia, which had long fueled the national economy and Francophone power, petered out. The wealthy Walloons lost everything, and instead of forcing painful economic reform, they relied on the growing economic prowess of Flanders, now a center of high-tech and international business.

With Flemish activists agitating for increased parity, a formal linguistic border was established through constitutional reform in 1970, and Belgium was formally divided three ways among Flanders, Wallonia and Brussels. From then on, everything that had been shared was divvied up.

[...]