On 25 May 2014, the Kingdom of Belgium held concurrently its European elections, its Federal elections, and its Regional elections. Voting is compulsory in Belgium, and the turnout was consequently high, around 90% in all three elections. As had been expected the results reflected the continuing rise of Flemish separatism and the growing divide between the two linguistic communities within the Belgian state.
Belgium rarely attracts foreign attention, except when something dramatic happens as was the recent fatal shooting at the Jewish Museum in Brussels which left an Israeli couple and a French woman dead and a Belgian critically wounded. The elections on 25 May passed unnoticed to the outside world, though to someone like me who has lived there for a number of years, they are a worrying illustration of a country uneasy with itself, desperately looking for a way out of its present sectarian quagmire that is seriously threatening its cohesion. What is even more worrying is that what is happening in Belgium, where separatists are determined to extricate themselves from the fold of a federal state, albeit within the democratic process, is happening in other European states.
Belgium is a relatively small country, roughly the size of Wales, with a population of about 10 million people, situated in a prosperous region in northwest Europe. Its national capital is also the headquarters of the European Union and of NATO. It found itself in its present mess largely because half the population of the country, the Dutch-speaking Flemings, using their utmost political and economic pressure, have divided it and federalized it and reduced it to a skeleton state, while the other half, the French-speaking Walloons, have no distinctive identity, and without their place in the Belgian state might simply disappear.
One can understand why Belgians unwittingly express a degree of uncertainty about their national identity. The country was born in 1831, at a conference in London, where the Great Powers of the time – Britain, France and Prussia – decided that the territory should become independent and not fall under anybody's influence. For two millennia this strategically located territory had been coveted by empire builders in Europe, beginning with Julius Caesar, and continuing with Charlemagne, the Habsburgs, Napoleon and most recently, Hitler. At the London Conference of 1831 the territory was named after the legendary monarch “Belgus” of Trojan origin, and was given a German king, Leopold of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, and a constitution modelled on the French constitution of 1791. However, these trimmings of statehood could never replace the urban and communal loyalty that for centuries had bound the inhabitants to their towns and rural communities.
The new state's constitution provided for a very restricted suffrage that gave power and influence to the French-speaking commercial and industrial bourgeoisie. What held society together were hierarchically organized social groups that substituted for the nation-state. The first to develop were the Catholic and the Anticlerical/Liberal families, which became fiercely antagonistic. They were joined by the Socialists in the 1880s, representing the growing industrial working class. Belgian public and private life has been organized around these three distinct social groups. They not only generated political parties to win elections and influence, but developed into nations-within-a-nation, providing schooling, trade unions, insurance, saving societies, and banking, as well as child care, youth groups, and holiday camps.
Cutting across the social and political organisation of Belgian society is the gaping fault line of language. The linguistic divide roughly corresponds to the line dividing communities that for centuries fell respectively under French or Dutch rule. Although the 1831 constitution of the new Belgian state provided that all citizens could use the language of their choice, French was the language of government, business and the law, and speakers of regional Flemish dialects were at a severe disadvantage. Flemish identity began to assert itself with the 1847 Declaration of Basic Principles of the Flemish movement. This declaration propagated a dangerous cocktail of linguistic rights, regional interests and Flemish resentment of the domination by the francophone elite. As the Government sought to compromise with Flemish demands two administratively distinct unilingual territories were created.
However, what seriously threatened the unity of Belgium was the reversal of economic fortunes. Since the 1960s, the once dominant French-speaking Wallonia, the traditional heartland of Belgian industrial power, has been in steep decline, while Flanders boomed. Unencumbered by old industries and an unemployable workforce, Flanders flourished with the growth of the services industries and commerce through its ports. As Flanders overtook Wallonia as the economically dominant region, it pressed for political gains to match its economic dominance.
As a result of seven revisions of the constitution and six institutional reforms, the Belgian unitary state has been torn apart and reconstructed into a loose federation. Belgium’s political architecture is frustratingly complex. The federal state is made up of three regions – Flanders, Wallonia and Brussels-Capital – each with its own elected parliament. Then there are three “communities” – the Dutch-speaking, the French-speaking and the German-speaking communities – also with their own parliaments. There are in addition ten provinces (five in Flanders and five in Wallonia) which also have administrative and governing functions, and a total of 589 municipalities. The whole political system is cumbersome with plenty of overlapping and duplicating authorities.
Within this fragile federal system the national government is only responsible for defence, foreign affairs, justice, social security and income tax. The regions and the communities do all the rest. The former are responsible for urbanism, environment, the economy, public works, transport, and external trade, while the linguistic communities are responsible for education, language, culture, some social services and family policy. If social security and income tax are shifted to the regions as the Flemish are demanding, the unitary state would be brought to the brink of extinction.
The New Flemish Alliance (N-VA) is now the largest party in Belgium having won all three elections held on 25 May 2014. It increased its number of seats in the European Parliament, in the Belgian Federal Parliament and in the Flemish Regional Parliament. The N-VA's leader, Mr Bart de Wever, obtained the highest number of personal votes, and his party, adding to its gains of the 2012 provincial and municipal elections, has become the undisputed champion of the Flemish cause.
Today's political landscape in Belgium is similar in many respects to the one resulting from previous elections. The main differences are that the supremacy of the Flemish separatist party is more pronounced, and that the electorate is even more fragmented. Fourteen parties managed to elect members to the Federal Parliament, all obtaining less than 12% of the national vote, except for the Flemish separatist party which gathered 20.26%.
Belgium's political fragmentation can only produce weak federal governments formed by painfully drawn-out coalition building, which has to balance the interests of the regions and linguistic communities. Coalition building is also based on the notion of “proportionality” whereby political, judicial, civil service, police and even military appointments are assigned according to established allocations to each linguistic community. No wonder that Belgium had eighteen governments between the two world wars, and a staggering forty-two since 1945.
So what is keeping Belgium together other than the King and Les Diables Rouges, the national football team. One answer is prosperity. Life for most people in Belgium is peaceful and materially sufficient. Devolution has been functioning so well that many Belgians would not even notice if the Belgian state were to melt away. Indeed, the so-called “Stateless State” has been held by some observers as a post-national model for the twenty-first century – a virtually stateless society in which diverse self-governing communities can co-exist in peace and prosperity as a nation state with minimum bonds.
Perhaps other states experiencing separatist pressure should look at Belgium’s model with the hope of escaping the worst perils of national separatism.