World’s largest iceberg, annual deforestation, Britney’s new arse… since time immemorial “the size of Belgium” has been the standard international measure of really quite surprisingly large things.
Maybe not for much longer, with the country moving closer to a definitive split between its Walloon (French-speaking) and Flemish populations, after repeated efforts to form a government six months after the election.
PM Guy Verhofestadt’s (pronounced: Saluzinsky) caretaker term is finishing, with the eight or so parties (every political formation – Socialists, Christian Democrats etc – have seperate Flemish and French organisations, except the Greens) no closer to an agreement and it is a measure of the crisis that Verhofestadt has been charged with coming up with some sort of deal (including changes to seperation of powers etc) and may be effectively recommissioned as PM, despite losing the June election.
As a nation, Belgium is a victim of the success of European integration. Formed in 1830 as a way of preventing France from having total control of Channel ports below the Netherlands and given the name of a Gallic tribe long since lost to history, it is a prime example of the way in which national traditions are invented for current political purposes.
Except in this case it was so little and so late that it never really gelled. The single European market, the euro, no border controls make nation-states intermediate and inefficient forms. Seperate states of Flanders and Wallonia are perfectly viable.
The problem is Brussels, which is a French city in a Flemish region – and effectively, as EU headquarters, a European one, with English nearly a dominant tongue. Were it not for its anomolous position, the place would have cracked apart long ago.
Though party leaders make a show of keeping the country together, many want a split. The mechanics of doing this would effectively prompt the beginning of the end of European nation-states and federations, by providing a template for dissolution. Scotland will leave the UK in a decade, Catalonia and Euskara may be emboldened, and so on. It’s a process of decades but it will happen.
Even more amazing would be actual conflict within Belgium between Wallonians and, erm, Flems. Not likely, nor impossible. And it would shake the dominant assumption that Western Europe is essentially a post-historical place, to its core.
The upside would be a vast expanse in the available pool of “famous Belgians” list.*
*Adolphe Sax, Maurice Maeterlink, Jacques Brel, Plastic Bertrand, Patrice Lumumba, Rene Magritte, Paul de Man, Herge, Goscinny, Uderzo, King Albert II and Barry Otto are my twelve, other suggestions welcome to boss@crikey.com.au
Just what we sensible westerners need to hear. With WA electing Libs in 11 of 15 seats, it is clear that the east-west gap is far more than economic. I hear the secession call arising.
The problem with the dissolution of Belgium is where the A$460 billion of public debt (2006 figures) would end up. Belgium hasn’t been the bastion of public sector economic management… (And would it kill to have a spell checker run over this article?