The Belgian crisis in detail

It is now more than five months since the elections of June 10, 2007, and still the Belgians wait for a new government.  Still there is no indication that a government can be formed.

Early in October 2007, Minister for Foreign Affairs De Gucht ignored an essential rule in diplomacy: don’t make a fool out of yourself.  He was fool enough to send a circular letter to Belgian embassies in all the corners of the world with instructions how to answer, should anyone ask if the country’s Dutch- and French-speaking parts are splitting up.  His answer merely insulted the intelligence:-

Tell people we’re happy together.

And to the question of when there will be a government, Foreign Minister De Gucht’s memo suggests the safely serpentine answer: “When the time is right.”

A much better analysis was to be found on 1st November in the Daily Telegraph, with thanks to Daniel Hannan.  It’s worth reproducing it in full:-

Belgium has now gone for 144 days without a government and you know what?… everything seems normal

Eurocrats are booking their tables at Comme Chez Soi, Moroccan boys are breakdancing in the metro stations, civil servants (there are lots of these) are lingering over their Speculoos biscuits and coffee with gloopy vitamin-enhanced milk substitute.

Which prompts the thought: perhaps there should never be a Belgian government. Next week, Belgium will break its previous record for going unadministered, and no one – other than the armies of fonctionnaires who fret for their pensions – seems especially bothered.

If things carry on, the Flemish administration may be tempted simply to do a Yeltsin and assume the powers of the defunct federation.

Why am I troubling you with my thoughts on Belgium? Three reasons. First, to quote an unintentionally hilarious line from Harold Evans’s memoir of his days as editor of the Times, “It’s been too long since we had an opinion piece on Belgium”. Western countries don’t sunder very often, and the story deserves more attention than it has had.

Second, because Belgium was largely our fault. Determined to prevent the Channel ports falling under the control of a hostile power, we underwrote the new state, placed a suitable Saxe-Coburg princeling (Queen Victoria’s uncle, as it happens) on its throne as Leopold I, and guaranteed it militarily.

Not that Leopold’s heirs were especially appreciative. During the First World War, his grandson, Albert I, offered to switch sides if the Germans would confirm him in his throne and pay reparations. (When you bear in mind why Britain had gone to war in the first place, this possibly ranks as the most ungrateful act in human history.)

During the Second World War, Albert’s son, Leopold III collaborated, and was later forced to abdicate. In short, whatever reasons we may once have had, Belgium has long since ceased to be of strategic value to us.

But the third reason is the most important. Belgium functions – or malfunctions – on the same basis as the EU. There is no Belgian language, no Belgian culture, precious little Belgian history.

As the winner of June’s election, Yves Leterme, has put it, Belgium resides in the king, the football team and some beers. To paraphrase René Magritte (one of the few unquestionably famous Belgians): “Ceci n’est pas une nation”.

Unable to appeal to a shared identity, the fledgeling Belgian government had to buy people’s loyalty though massive public works schemes. Every state institution was dragged into the racket: the trade unions, the nationalised enterprises, the social security networks.

Belgium, in short, became a microcosm of what the EU is becoming: a mechanism for the arbitrary reallocation of money.

The Flemish are understandably keenest on severance: they contribute most of the taxes, and resent paying for what they see as their indolent Francophone neighbours.

Wallonia accounts for 33 per cent of Belgium’s population, but only 24 per cent of its GDP. Twenty per cent of Walloons are unemployed, and 40 per cent work for the government.

Oddly enough, though, I think that French-speaking Belgians might be the chief beneficiaries of a break-up. When commentators say that “Wallonia” benefits from subsidies of 20 billion euros a year, what they really mean is that a handful of Francophone politicians and officials benefit: the grants give them the power to reward their friends and punish their enemies.

Cut out these grants, and the deadening bureaucracy that goes with them, and Walloons would start making and selling things instead of having to arrange their affairs around their regular fix.

Wallonia, in short, might prove the Slovakia of the divorce: the poor partner, initially nervous about going it alone, that achieves a stunning growth rate once it gets the hang of things.

But what of Brussels, the largely French-speaking city that is also the capital of Flanders? Well, here the Euro-enthusiasts have plans.

If Belgium falls into its two constituent halves, they aim to lift its ugly grey capital out of the state altogether and place it under direct EU administration as a kind of Washington DC: only then would the EU finally and visibly transcend the nation-state.

The trouble is that this will only happen after a resounding reaffirmation of the national principle.  Belgium is failing because there are no real Belgians, just as there are no real Europeans.  Rather, there are discrete peoples, with their own languages, television stations and political parties.

A democracy without a demos – the unit with which we identify when we use the word “we” – is left only with kratos: the power of a system that compels by force of law what it cannot ask in the name of patriotism. And kratos alone cannot sustain a state.

Leaving aside Hannan’s opinion of the ugliness of Brussels, he is absolutely correct in his analysis here.  He is correct, too, that the financial transfers from Flanders to Wallonia are Belgium’s biggest headache.  But Flanders has also begun paying financial transfers to Brussels as a result of the Walloon Parti Socialiste introducing the same pernicious client-server system in Brussels too.  The last exact numbers date from 2003 (in Dutch): 11.3 billion euro yearly.  This is close to 2.000 euro for each Fleming, babies included.  Hannan’s estimation of 20 billion euros a year today is rather high.  But on the other hand it is a serious understatement to say that the Walloons display something less than full transparency.  So we don’t actually know.

Projections show that these financial transfers will continue to grow at least until 2020.  Flanders transfers 6.6% of its GDP to Wallonia.  By way of a comparison, between the former Western and Eastern Germanies the financial solidarity was never more than about 3%, see here (in Dutch).

I guess these Belgian financial transfers could be compared with the £11 billion of English money that heads for Edinburgh each year.  But the English can, perhaps, find solace in oil (and then England is 8 times the size of Flanders – mind you, Wallonia is forty percent less populous as Scotland).

The Flemish are in great haste to make the transfer system more transparent so reforms can flow.  It is a just ambition.  Flanders and the Netherlands have the same kind of economy, but in the Global Competitiveness Report 2007-2008the Netherlands ranks number 10 and Belgium only number 20.

A long history of picking the Flemish pocket

Financial transfers from Flanders to Wallonia have a long history.  For a proper historical understanding I refer again to Daniel Hannan’s article, and to the secret betrayal of his allies by King Albert I during World War I; (click here - in Dutch, see p. 31).

From the very start of World War I Belgium’s King Albert I started secret negotiations with the Germans with the objective of switching sides.  By February 1916 the Germans had become impatient and stepped-up pressure on the King by inciting the Flemish nationalists.  However, by 1917 the Americans had entered the war, so the King made the best of a bad job and dropped the Germans.  After World War I the King and his French-speaking elite staged their (first) repression against the Flemish.  They assigned the label “traitor” not just to those who really collaborated with the Germans, but to all Flemish nationalists.

The question remains: what evil plans could the occupying Germans hatch to take a minority of Flemish nationalists for a ride?  To understand, I unearthed a political pamphlet that was printed in 1918 during the German occupation (see here  - in old Dutch).  It’s a Flemish nationalist pamphlet, and even at that date it is seeking to inspire the Flemings to declare independence.

So the images make themselves clear.  On page 4 and 5 we read that from 1830 to 1918 the Flemings paid 18 billion Gold francs in taxes to Belgium, and only received 6 billion Gold francs back.  For the Walloons it was the inverse.  Mind you, in that period Flanders was a poor agricultural area and Wallonia a rich industrial region!  The heavy Walloon industry was seen as strategic, and poor Flanders had to support it.  These financial transfers continued unabated even when famine ravaged Flanders.  Many Flemings had no other choice but to emigrate to Wallonia or America.

Thus, in fact, the heavy coal and steel industry of Wallonia - these days almost all gone - was built on Flemish sweat, blood and hunger.  And on page 10 of the pamphlet we see two postmen, a Fleming and a Walloon.  Their disparate size illustrates the numbers of postmen (and roughly the actual numbers of public servants) performing identical tasks in Flanders and Wallonia. The Walloon claims that Flanders must “help” them in reverse because the Walloons previously helped Flanders are one of those fallacies the Walloons are spreading around to put the Flemish in the wrong.

The land grab

Apart from the money transfers to Wallonia, the second great political problem in Belgium today is the struggle for territory - at the Flemish expense, of course.  In fact, the whole argument is about the Flemish border zone around Brussels.  The issue is important for Walloons because they see Brussels as having a possible exchange value for the “restructuring” costs in a post-Belgian Wallonia – costs that will have to be financed, in the end, by … France.

Historically, Brussels once was a Flemish and fully Dutch-speaking city.  It is located in Flanders.  It never was bilingual, even not in the 8th century.  But, as it became Belgium’s capital it attracted French-speaking Walloon immigrants.

Until World War II the Flemings, although mostly bilingual, retained the majority in Brussels.  Immediately after the War, though, a disaster happened.  The Belgian Francophile war courts “in the field” became dominated by French-speaking prosecutors.  For the Flemish this brought a severe settling of accounts, with hundreds of executions, tens of thousands of imprisonments and massive “economic” fines with the scarcely disguised aim of encouraging nationalistic Flemings to emigrate.  It was a way to get rid of them permanently and without too much “unpleasantness”.

It is true that among Flemings convicted for war crimes there were some real criminals.  But their convictions were employed to blacken innocent nationalists.  In such an atmosphere, all too typical in Brussels in the weeks after the “liberation”, entire Flemish school classes were simply transferred to the French-speaking school departments. Flemish pupils suddenly got a French-speaking teacher, and no Flemish father or mother could safely protest.

In the early sixties the Flemish border was fixed.  At that time the border line was called the “language frontier”.  For the Flemish it has the same meaning as the “green line” in the conflict between Israel and Palestine, and is as disputed as any discussion about the exact location of Israel’s “security fence”.

Brussels became a bilingual French-Dutch language island in monolingual Dutch-speaking Flanders.

In his introduction of the 1963 law, as recorded in Proceedings of the Chamber of Representatives, the Lower House, June 27 1963, page 5 and 6, Belgian Prime Minister Theo Lefèvre said:

The government wants to implement the social and cultural homogeneity of the two large language areas (...) the second objective of the law is to guarantee the unilingual Dutch character of the new district of Halle-Vilvoorde.

Despite that good intention, then the narrative of Flemish history took an unforeseen turn.  Over the next few decades whole districts of Brussels were taken over by a very new and different types of immigrant, of whom the Moroccans became the most numerical, as well as most feared.  Last year 57% of babies born in Brussels were to Muslim parents (in German).

The wealthy French-speakers of Brussels were the first to leave the city.  Where else would they settle than in the Flemish border zone?  Moreover, they had a strong preference for the six Flemish districts where they had gained “language facilities” at the 1962-63 settlement.

(The story here is that at the same time the Flemish frontier was fixed, six border districts with a French-speaking minority of 30 to 50% were given some minor “language facilities”.  In practical terms, this means that the Flemish government organises primary education with reinforced study of the Dutch language.  Newly arrived French-speakers can obtain a French translation of documents issued by the local authorities, but only on request.)

In fact, the Muslim immigration into Brussels occasioned such a “flight” of French-speakers at one time and to the same places, that they immediately felt “at home” in the Flemish border zone and didn’t want to adapt culturally.  In the six “language facility” districts the French-speakers became the majority.

A collision between the real-world effects of migration and formal Constitutional agreements became inevitable.

The top map shows the Brussels-Halle-Vilvoorde electoral district as it is now - BHV for short.  Halle and Vilvoorde are two Flemish commuter cities. The lower map gives the situation as demanded by a recent ruling of the Belgian Constitutional Court.  The Flemish border zone is disconnected from Brussels, so that French-speakers in Flanders cannot vote for leading French-speaking politicians in Brussels.  At the same time, this change makes the province of Vlaams-Brabant one big Flemish electoral constituency.  An alternative solution to the constitutional problem much desired by the French-speakers is simply to annex the Flemish border zone to Brussels.  But that will never be acceptable to Flanders.

Of the language line and the border line, Emeritus professor Etienne Vermeersch of the Ghent University argues (in Dutch):-

Those who are looking for a solution (to the Constitutional Court’s ruling) should get to the heart of the matter.  All Flemings who are familiar with this issue take it for granted that there is an accord (in the Belgian Constitution) among all Belgians that Wallonia and Flanders are both unilingual (the 1932 arrangement) and that the Language Frontier was laid down definitively in 1962-63.  Well then, all French-speaking politicians that I’ve followed in recent months on French-speaking television repudiate this territorial principle: they mean that the French-speakers of Brussels who settle in the Flemish border zone don’t have to assimilate and that as soon as they have the majority in a local council, a plebiscite should be possible to annex the district to (bilingual) Brussels.

But the Belgian Constitution came into being with the agreement of the Flemish and the French-speakers.  The present situation that Francophone politicians in Brussels can pick up votes from people living deep in Flanders is unconstitutional - the Flemish voters in Walloonish-Brabant can’t do the same.  They, unlike the French-speaking politicians, did not “forget” to homologate their promises, as written down in the 1962-1963 settlement.

In fact, the Belgian Constitutional Court, in confirmation of both its Dutch-speaking and French-speaking co-presidents, has ruled that this electoral inequality is illegal and must come to an end (in Dutch).  But until new electoral legislation is finalised, no legal federal Belgian parliamentary elections can be held.  Chaos is on the horizon, and there is no escape – not even by the usual political chicanery of putting things off til later.

And that is the nature of the present Belgian political imbroglio.

The political shenanigans

By the way, you should know that all this fuss is only about a few tens of thousands of French-speaking voters in 35 districts in all, with a heavy concentration in those six districts with “language facilities”.  You should also know that, within an independent Flanders, those French-speakers will keep all of their democratic rights.

It should be stressed that the Flemish negotiators first tried to settle an accord with the Walloons, proposing concessions over and above what, according to international standards, is usual in such cases.  Extra money for Brussels is an understandable concession, but extra language facilities in those six “language facility” districts are something else.  And finally the Flemish negotiators even proposed a possibility for French-speakers in the six “language facility districts” to request an “electoral domicile” in Brussels, so a large part of the French-speakers in the Flemish border zone simply could continue to vote for the city’s leading French-speaking politicians.

But the French-speakers could not be seduced. Le Monde wrote:-

On Wednesday the Flemish majority in the Belgian Home Affairs Select Committee didn’t want to hear any more about it: from the socialist left to the xenophobe far-right (meaning Vlaams Belang), passing by the right-wing populists (meaning List Dedecker), it voted for the scission of BHV, knocking former accords on the head that envisaged linguistic rights for the French-speakers of the periphery of Brussels.

Hello!  Has France no respect for the Belgian Constitution?  Apparently, both they and the Walloons are suffering from Selective Memory Syndrome.  Or maybe they just believe their own lies.

(... as they believed them, for example, when the Flemish government, on the advice from the provincial governor, decided not to appoint (French-speaking) acting mayors in three of the language facility districts around Brussels because language laws had been broken several times.)

In fact, the Flemish had little choice but to vote for the scission of BHV “without any further delay”.  Quite apart from anything else, there was the time problem to consider. 

The vote is only the first step to getting the bill passed.  A plenary session of the Chamber of Representatives has to make the final decision on the freedom of BHV.  But procedurally, the bill must be finalised before the end of the current four-year legislative period.  Otherwise we will have a situation without a solution, and thus total chaos.  My personal opinion here is that the Walloons would probably prefer chaos, and may even be relying on it because, then, “higher powers” can be enlisted.

Understand, therefore, that chaos is not without its fans.  It is also underwritten by the system.  The Constitutional Court’s ruling gave an expiry date to the state of Belgium.  As long as the Court’s ruling is not executed, every administrative step in the run-up to new elections can be nullified by decision of a Belgian court.  If a new election becomes impossible this even sweeps away the general democratic principles of consent and representation of the people.

What we are seeing today in Belgium is two cars locked together at full speed and being driven along a narrow track, towards a still-distant wall.  The one who turns the wheel first will be the loser, and perhaps neither driver really believes in the concrete existence of the wall.  So far, the French-speakers have dragged out negotiations for five month, and the wall is getting closer.  Meanwhile …

The Walloon delay manoeuvres started with a motion of “conflict of interest” that was approved by the Parliament of the French Community.  At the meeting there was a lot of posturing about “Flemish aggression”, and the majority of speakers stressed how invoking a “conflict of interest” was an appropriate response.

The “conflict of interest” motion introduced a cooling-off period.  It means that the parliamentary passage of the Flemish bill will be delayed by 120 days.  With so many parliaments in Belgium, the French-speakers can invoke this procedure four times (in Dutch), adding a global delay of 480 days or 16 months, probably all of it full of political flatulence.

And this is not the end of the story.  Next, the French-speakers will certainly initiate the complicated “alarm bell” procedure, asking for advice about the Flemish bill from the Belgian government (if it exists by that time).  That has to be good for two months of delay.

And then the French-speakers in parliament can resort to the filibuster.  It will likely be a filibuster as never seen before in history, all in the hope of running the Flemish bill out of time.

But the French-speakers have concocted yet another strategy to escape from their constitutional duties and maintain their privileges.  The idea is to expel the Flemish nationalists from the negotiations by separating the young and small, moderate-nationalist Nieuw-Vlaamse Alliantie from their Christian Democrat partners.  But the Christian Democrats won’t go along with it, in part because they fear the creation of the much-discussed “Forza Flandria”, a cooperation between N-VA, the right wing populists from List Dedecker, and Vlaams Belang.  This combination of three conservative parties would create a political entity standing at around 30 to 35 % in the polls.  The will is there in Vlaams Belang, whose president Frank Vanhecke has written that in that event he is prepared to step down to facilitate movement toward “Forza Flandria”.  Lijst Dedecker is cooler - perhaps for personal-political, competitive reasons - but still pragmatic.

The geopolitics and the politics of debt

In France a recent opinion poll showed that 54 % of the French are favourable to incorporating Wallonia as soon as the Belgian divorce is finalised.

At the request of French president Sarkozy, chief Walloon negotiator Didier Reynders keeps Paris regularly informed about the state of affairs.  Meanwhile Sarkozy has linked the Belgian crisis to the debate about the location of a permanent seat of the European parliament (ie, in Strasbourg or in Brussels).  “L’ambition grande de la France” was, is and always will be the premier position among the nations of Europe.  A European Parliament in Strasbourg would be ideal in that respect, but one in a Walloon Brussels, when Wallonia is French, would be pretty helpful too.

On the other side, the Dutch are a little less enthusiastic about a possible merger of Flanders with the Netherlands.  Only a minority of 45% would support a union.  The supporters of the right-wing Dutch politician Geert Wilders are enthusiastic.  But, even though 80 per cent of Dutch respondents say they “like Flemings”, a full union of Flanders and the Netherlands will remain a utopian ambition for a long time.  As an alternative,  greater cooperation between Flanders and the Netherlands will certainly be given a boost. In any case, Flanders is an economic engine that can live on its own.

Luxembourg’s Prime Minister Jean-Claude Juncker, who is President of the group of EU finance ministers, commented at the end of their last EU meeting that he’s pleased that the Belgian Franc has been replaced by the Euro.  Meanwhile, in financial circles there is mounting concern about what a Belgian divorce will mean for the towering €278bn (£198bn) public debt.  Over 50pc of it is held by foreign investors, fortunately mostly as long-term debts.  Remy Salters, who covers Belgium for Standard & Poor’s, says, “We don’t think a break-up will happen, but it would be hugely complicated if it did.”

With its exceptional AAA rating and a current 1.5 billion euro cash surplus, Flanders will have a zero debt position in 2008.  In fact, Flanders has a structural surplus on its yearly budget.  It is no joke to say that Flanders is exploring how to dole out its surpluses to less competent administrations for the lack of more interesting alternatives.

But will Flanders guarantee Belgium’s debts in the event of a divorce?  Or will Flanders adopt the nationalists’ position that “debts must be situated at their origin”? That being Wallonia, the creditors would never see back their money.

Under a condition of anonymity, a Flemish financial consultant at the Commercial Group “De Zwijger” suggested that Flanders could “help” Belgium to keep its AA+ sovereign rating by guaranteeing future Belgian loans, under condition of “respect for the Flemish border”, after independence.

It’s an interesting idea.  But as I question whether Wallonia is capable of respecting anything Flemish, so I wonder how long Belgium’s AA+ sovereign rating would really be safe.

Posted by Johan Van Vlaams on Tuesday, November 20, 2007 at 01:40 PM in World Affairs
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