France takes a condescending, affectionate approach to its small neighbour. The butt of jokes, Belgians are seen as slow-witted frites eaters with a creative genius that produced Art Nouveau, Hergé, the father of Tintin, and entertainers who move to France when they make it.
The latest of these is Cécile de France, one of the cinema's hottest young stars [pictured above]. Otherwise, Belgium is Brussels, the French-speaking seat of the European bureacracy and source of many French ills.
Watching the mess in Georgia, we should not get too smug about breakaway provinces on the fringe of central Asia. An ugly struggle for ethnic separation is brewing only an hour's train trip north from Paris......in Belgium.
Belgium is a little country sandwiched between France and Holland. It disappears periodically, whenever Germany goes on a shopping expedition for territory.
It was, in short, a Petri dish in which where the EU concocted its formula for the new Empire of many and diverse nations living within a large and happy federal state. So confident were the Eurocrats of their coming success that they made Brussels their capital on the assumption that everything else would just fall into place. WRONG!
If Belgium goes the way of the dodo, then so may the EU. And would that be such a bad thing? Those Eurocrats have been ramming their nonsensical legislation down throats for decades now with an incredible sense of determination and destiny. And as the Irish recently found out, these are not people who take no for an answer. FUNNY VIDEO EXPLANATION
Now those damn Flemish are even outsourcing their unemployment to Wallonia.
MR chamber member François Bellot, serving as mayor of the tourist attraction town of Rochefort in the Ardennes, is of the opinion that the Flemish jobless are moving to Wallonia to escape the Flemish employment service VDAB, who continuously bother them with finding a new job.
Imagine that....getting unemployment, and they actually expect you to "look" for a job!
They do not have to fear the Walloon service Forem, who will not bother them, the mayor believes. Moreover, they can live much more cheaply in Wallonia. He has questioned federal labour minister Joëlle Milquet (CdH) on this matter and she has responded by saying that the Flemings in Wallonia will also fall under the administrative control of the federal employment office RVA in addition to the activation policy of the Walloon employment service Forem.
I don't think the French would take them though. Why not ally them with the Quebecois and create a new nation of Francophone rejects.
If Belgium should be split, almost half of the people living below the language divide, in Wallonia, would not object to Wallonia becoming a part of France. According to a poll carried out by the Francophone Belgian daily Le Soir and the French daily La Voix du Nord, 49 percent of Walloon citizens would not object to Wallonia being incorporated into France.
I don't think the French would take them though. Why not ally them with the Quebecois and create a new nation of Francophone rejects.
The same poll, conducted among some 1,500 people, shows that 60 percent of French respondents support the idea. 23 percent of Walloon respondents think that Belgium will really cease to exist, but 59 percent say our country will not disappear. However, the political crisis in Belgium is "serious" according to 93 percent of the people taking part in the poll.
"Wallonia and France are quite close already" The Flemish public broadcaster VRT went to Brussels to listen to the man in the street. "Belgium wil disappear, that's for sure. If there is a majority in Flanders to split the country up... it's like in a relationship. If your wife wants to go, she is off", says one French-speaking man. "Wallonia becoming a part of France would have one big advantage. We would only have one government. One, instead of six!" says another man. "Wallonia and France are quite close", a French-speaking woman tells reporters. "We speak the same language and have the same mentality."
A simmering Belgian political crisis boiled over today after Flemish lawmakers voted on the deeply-contentious issue of French-speakers' voting rights in Brussels suburbs, threatening the fragile coalition government. Members of parliament managed to schedule in a vote on the issue as sought by Flemish lawmakers, which minority French-speaking legislators see as a direct affront. But to block any vote for 120 days French-speakers could launch a conflict of interest procedure as early as Friday. Eager to avoid a crisis, Prime Minister Yves Leterme had in recent days been racing against the clock to negotiate a compromise on the issue, which is threatening his government barely two months after taking office. The row was one of many dividing politicians of the rival language communities as Leterme struggled for nine months to set up a coalition government following his election victory last June. Flemish parties, want to do away with a special arrangement whereby French-speakers in Flemish suburbs of Brussels vote in the capital, where French-speakers are a majority. Flanders seeks greater regional powers to reflect its prosperous status. It also resents subsidising the less affluent French-speaking Wallonia region.
Belgium's linguistic communities pay a high price for sticking together, resorting to fudges that range from the silly to the destructive. Put like that, you can see Belgium's new government not as a relief, but as an awful warning. A political union hatched together by a fractious elite, and answerable only to itself, is not a model for anybody to follow. STORY IN THE ECONOMIST
George Bush's popularity rating would look pretty good in Belgium, where an opinion poll for the daily La Libre Belgique showed that 54 percent of the north and 92 percent of the south did not trust the new Belgian prime minister.
Belgium Political Crisis Ends With New Government. Belgium's rival parties say they have agreed to a new government, ending months of deadlock over demands for greater autonomy by the Dutch-speaking part of the country.
The deal for a coalition government was reached by five Belgian political parties representing not only political differences - between the left and the right - but the key split between those from Francophone Wallonia and Dutch-speaking Flanders.
AFTER nine months, Belgium finally gets a proper government on Thursday. (Let me know how that works out) Guy Verhofstadt, prime minister since 1999, will make way for Yves Leterme and a new five-party coalition.
The deal will lead to a further weakening of Belgium's federal state in favour of regional governments, an unpopular decision in the poorer, Francophone south, where some of them might actually have to get a job to get paid.
My...lets throw flowers at ourselves and we shall be known as the Committee of Wise Men! It's been my experience that a wise man in Belgium must be an expat or a tourist.
Eight Belgian elder statesmen reached a breakthrough deal on further devolution early on Monday that could end eight months of political deadlock and lead to formation of a new government within a month. Under the deal reached early on Monday, the interim five-party government would try to transfer a series of minor powers to the regions and pursue measures to strengthen cooperation between the regions. STORY
A 66-year-old man from New York, Virgilio Cintron, died before he could cash his Social Security check so his roommate and a friend used an office chair to wheel Virgilio's corpse down to the Pay-O-Matic check cashing store in an attempt to cash the check. A trick used by Walloons for decades, its why the Flemish want to seperate.
Unfortunately, the two men couldn't help but be noticed by passers-by as they wheeled a corpse, flailing from side to side, along Ninth Avenue in Manhattan. The roommate and a third man, who was a friend of the deceased, reportedly left Cintron outside as they entered the establishment, pointing to him through the window when the cashier told them that Cintron would have to be present to cash the check, according to the police account.
When the cashier asked them to bring Cintron inside, they exited the building, where they were confronted by an on-duty Real Time Crime Center detective who had been in the building next door when he noticed the commotion. The two men were taken into police custody, where they were questioned and may face charges related to criminal impersonation or check fraud. Cintron is believed to have died of natural causes.
The party is frequently depicted as "extremist" or "racist" in the international media. (Which simply means its a threat to the status quo politicicians in Belgium) Its predecessor party, Vlaams Blok (Flemish Bloc), was dissolved in 2004 after being condemned as such by a Belgian court.
In an interview that appeared in German in November, Hanspeter Born of the Swiss weekly Die Weltwoche spoke with Vlaams Belang chairman Frank Vanhecke about the party's goal of independence for Flanders and the charges of racism against it. The interview appears here for the first time in English.
Nearly 70,000 new companies were established in Belgium this year, almost 10 percent more than last year, according to Unizo, a Flemish organization of self-employed and small and medium-sized enterprises on Friday.
This is the best figure for Belgium in years, but it is still quite low compared to the other euro zone countries, the organization said. The increase in the number of start-ups is highest in the Brussels region (15 percent), followed by French-speaking southern region of Wallonia (10 percent) and Dutch-speaking northern region of Flanders (8 percent), the statistics showed.
Unizo, which provides information for start-ups, said the threshold for starting a business in Belgium is still too high.Major obstacles include the social statute, securing sufficient start-up capital and bank guarantees and the uncertainty of starting one's own business, it said.
The organization said the government should help entrepreneurs by granting start-up bonuses, lowering tax burdens for companies and providing a better social statute.The organization also suggested that the authorities provide a better safety net for entrepreneurs who go bankrupt.
After a meeting with King Albert II, Guy Verhofstadt, left, the liberal ousted by voters in June, accepted the job of forming and leading an interim government because of the ”gravity of the situation in which our country finds itself.” But he said he did not want to remain in power beyond March. Mr. Verhofstadt, who had been prime minister since 1999, conceded defeat after the June election but has stayed on because the conservatives who won proved unable to form a coalition.
On Saturday, thousands of trade unionists took to the streets in Brussels, complaining about the political stalemate and rising food and fuel prices.
Belgium created a social welfare system in which the unions are related to one specific political party and it is the unions which pay the jobless peoples support payments.
The medicare and health insurance system payments are also executed by organisations related each to one political party. For this "work", the health insurance organisations and the unions receive an administration "commission" of 7%.
Do you think the unions want to stop this? The Walloon jobless bring an enormous income to the unions. The Flemish unions, which are Socialist at heart, would lose serious financial income in an independent Flanders.
King Albert announced today that the federal government changed the countries Lion Emblem to a multicolored red, yellow, and black BELGIAN CONDOM because it more accurately reflects the government's political stance.
A condom allows for inflation, halts production, destroys the next generation, protects a bunch of pricks, and gives you a sense of security while you're actually getting screwed!
Belgium's Wallonian Media Minister Fadila Laanen has described an attack against the French-speaking broadcaster RTBF as "horrendous and unacceptable".On Saturday, the head of Belgium's Flemish Christian Democrats, Yves Leterme, blamed his failure to form a cabinet on the Wallonian broadcaster RTBF and the French-speaking political parties.
He compared the French-speaking broadcaster to the Rwandan radio station RTLM, which broadcast vitriolic attacks against Tutsis during the 1994 genocide. Mr Leterme was angry about a report by the Wallonian broadcaster over his failure to form a cabinet after 175 days. Six months after the Belgian parliamentary elections, Mr Leterme was forced to hand over his position as cabinet mediator to his political rival, outgoing Prime Minister Guy Verhofstadt.
Today marks six months without a new government and the prospects of a solution appear dim despite the return of the outgoing prime minister to the political scene and the population's growing impatience.
Meanwhile, public anger is growing over the political establishment's seemingly interminable quarrels. Belgium's three main unions are due to step up the pressure next Saturday when they are scheduled to hold a demonstration to call on a new government to tackle problems such as eroding purchasing power.
Yesterday, the Brussels newspaper De Standaard reports that Verhofstadt is about to form another government of Liberals and Socialists. This coalition will have 75 of the 150 seats in the Federal Chamber of Representatives, though only 32 of the 88 Flemish seats. Flanders again, will not get what it is entitled to. In Belgium, elections have no consequences. The majority never gets what it votes for.
What is the pattern in one part of Brussels has become the pattern in EU, too. Two years ago the electorates in the Netherlands and France rejected the EU Constitution. The Eurocrats in Brussels simply continue as if the French and Dutch electorates have never objected.
35,000 Belgians demonstrated in Brussels Sunday against the inability to form a government and against arguments between the linguistic communities. The initiative came from a civil servant in Liege who started a petition demanding that the politicians focus on the 'real' problems in the country.
Here's One for you fans of the information coming out of financial markets: The spreads over German bonds have jumped from four to 17 as questions grow about the long-term status of Belgium's €278 billion (£198 billion) public debt. Those markets are indicating that many more people think Belgium will break up. Real money tends to bitch slap people into reality a bit. If it does, there'll have to be some allocation of that debt to the various places that then become sovereign: "The Belgian Treasury has no plan at all. They could think about two systems: one where the debt is guaranteed as a whole by the two regions. Or they could split it between the two regions, but that is not easy because they have different credit ratings. "Flanders has AAA, while Brussels and Wallonia are lower," Be nice to buy Belgian debt at AA+ and end up with Flanders at AAA, wouldn't it? But that isn't, unfortunately, what's likely to happen in the event of a break up. If markets aren't what you use instead of tea leaves, how about this? There is an online petition site calling for Belgian unity with stickers and posters up all over Brussels, the glory of it is that all the slogans are in English as they wouldn't dare put them in either of the big national languages. Difficult to argue for national unity if you have to use a foreign language to unite your supporters really, isn't it?
It might be a good idea to pay attention when the Germans want something. Belgians who speak German -- a semi-autonomous community of 70,000 are feeling left out.
Belgium's forgotten German-speaking community is starting to speak up about the squabbles of compatriots that have left the country in political deadlock for over five months.
"It's always about the Dutch and the French-speaking communities and I'm a little disappointed that they don't even talk about us," said Henri Sparla, a senior citizen.
France takes a condescending, affectionate approach to its small neighbour. The butt of jokes, Belgians are seen as slow-witted frites eaters with a creative genius that produced Art Nouveau, Hergé, the father of Tintin, and entertainers who move to France when they make it.
