End of a crisis, at least for a moment

There is, at least formally, a new government in Belgium. The political crisis is over, for the time being. The subject for this blog no longer exists. So we bring it here to an end. Or should we say: we just take a break?

The very fragile coalition that has been put together by Guy Verhofstadt for officialy no longer than three months, can break apart at any moment. The new crisis will then probably be worse than the one of the 192 past days. Or will the knowledge that it will be worse precisely temper all the political fights and disputes of the last months, after a few weeks of rest around Christmas and New year. Who knows?

What is wrong with Belgium? We explained the deeper roots of the nationality-crisis in the country and of the problems to form an orange-blue coalition before (7 september and 8 september:Old quarrel, new twist and 17 september: Is this the real life; is this just phantasy?). With the benefit of hindsight one can add a few things.

The direct cause of this crisis has no doubt been the decision of the Flemish christian democrats of CD&V to embrace Flemish nationalism. Formally this happened at the end of 2003 when the then opposition-leader Yves Leterme forged his cartel with the N-VA of Bart Dewever. CD&V, once the leading party of the country, had fallen to 21 % of the votes in Flanders in 2003, after thirty years of steady decline. The party knew for long it had an electoral reservoir in nationalism, but had not tapped in it for fear of being kicked out of the Belgian establishmet. After the Flemsh liberals had become the biggest party in 1999, they were kicked out. So they opened up Pandora’s box. And largely won the elections of June the 10th.

The N-VA, which is officialy separatist, has certainly contributed to the present crisis. At least twice in the negotiations it reacted negatively when the leader of the Walloon liberals, Didier Reynders, softened his positions on the nationality-issues. They failed to see the opportunity, or did not want to see it. And each time they took CD&V with them.

But the deeper cause of the crisis lies in the big differences in public opinion in the (Flemish) north and the (Walloon) south of the country. As there are no longer parties with a nationwide appeal – Flemish parties present themselves only in Flanders to voters, Walloon only in Wallony and Brussels – it becomes more and more difficult to form a dynamic government. The federal council of ministers looks more and more like a bilateral conference of delegates from two regions.

Flemish public opinion is divided fifty-fifty in left and right. Wallony has always been very left-wing. In Wallony Didier Reynders won the election of June the 10th, and for the first time since 1894 the socialists (PS) were no longer the biggest party in French-speaking Belgium. So Reynders thought he could lure the Walloon Christian democrats of CDH into a government without the socialists. It took six months to become obvious to everybody that CDH was too strongly linked wth the PS, and in fact a left-wing party. The party itself is not really clear about it, because it still has many right-wing voters in rural areas.

All this has led to a Belgian government in which the Flemish parties have formed a centre-right coalition and the Walloon a centre-left. The logical conclusion out of this is further devolution. But that is not as logical as it seems. Devolution means larger responsibilities for the regions. But Wallony and Brussels are still economically weaker than Flanders, and their royal social policy is largely financed through federal fiscal revenues.

Unemployment – which is unlimited in time in Belgium – is twice as high in Wallony than in Flanders. It is because of the perception in (centre-right and right-wing opinion in) Flanders that left-wing Walloon politicians will do nothing about it – trade unions pay the unemployment benefits and recruit tens of thousands of members through this system – that Flemish demands for devolution of employment policy has become one of the hottest issue in the nationality-disputes.

In the third government of Guy Verhofstadt CDH has now obtained the portfolio of … Employment Policy. It has designated Josly Piette for the post, who until two years ago was the leader of the Walloon wing of the largest, Christian trade union in the country. One can expect he will either try to soften the inevitable reform of the unemployment system to keep the damage for the unions as small as possible, or that he will obstruct it all along. In the latter case, do not bet a dime on Belgium’s future.

ON LOCATION: The decline and fall of Burgundy

Like each drama, the Belgian crisis is a long story of unusual events on many locations. But do not expect the normal elements of a nationality crisis like bloodshed, riots or huge demonstrations. Most of the scenery had to do with hotels, castles and restaurants. After all, Brussels was once the capital city of the dukes of Burgundy, who in the fifteenth century for more than 100 years lavishly spent their gold on painters like Van Eyck and Memling, the first polyfon musicians and the finest clothes in Europe. And above all they made a few dishes (boeuf bourguignon to name but one) and the wines of Burgundy world-famous. So follow us on a short sight-seeiing along the path of Belgiums crisis: 1. Discothèque Claridge, Place Madou, Saint-Josse, June the 10th

On the evening of election day this brandnew disco under the Madou Tower was hired (for at least 4000 euro) by the cartel of the Flemish christian democrat CD&V and the Flemish nationalist N-VA to celebrate an expected victory. It was a surprising choice for the normally rather dull party, but a celebration it was indeed. The cartel became by far the strongest formation in parliament and CD&V's leader Yves Leterme obtained a huge personal score of 800.000 votes. Flags with lions, the symbol of the Flemish region, were deployed in great numbers, causing a slight scare among many French-speaking Belgians who saw the images on tv.

2. Saint-Johns Hospital, Botanic Garden Lane 32, Brussels, June the 26th On June the 26th the 73 years old King Albert II fell in his palace in Brussels and was brought to the hospital of Saint John a few hundred meters from the Madou Tower. He received a new hip and had to stay for about ten days in the hospital. On his sickbed politician after politician came to visit him, as the first initiatives to form a new government had to be taken. Didier Reynders, the leader of the Walloon liberal MR, who had been designated informateur, came most of all and was frequently met by a few dozen camera's at the entrance of the hospital. 3. The cathedral of Saint-Gudule, center of Brussels, July the 21st As on each national day in Belgium, the 21 st of July started with mass in the greatest and oldest cathedral of Brussel, where five centuries ago the young Habsburg sovereign an later emperor Charles the fifth was crowned king of Spain. This time the newly appointed formateur Yves Leterme came to attend. At the entrance he was jokingly asked by a French-speaking tv-journalist if he could sing the national anthem in French. Leterme started to sing and seems not to have realised immediately that he was singing the Marseillaise, the national anthem of France. Certainly in the French-speaking media in Belgium, suspicions against him took a new twist. 4. The castle of Hertoginnedal, Oudergem on the southeastern outskirts of Brussels, July the 24th

When Yves Leterme started to negotiate a coalition of liberal and christian democrat parties, he took the whole crowd to the castle of Hertoginnedal. This was the place were a former prime minister, Jean-Luc Dehaene, held his government meetings between 1992 and 1999 because there it was possible to keep the press at a distance of the discussions. Leterme hoped he could like Dehaene keep the inner secrets of the castle out of the media. But he overlooked one crucial detail: since then cell phones and PDA's have penetrated daily lives. And soon it became clear that negotiators inside were sending sms-messages and e-mails to the waiting journalist outside. The failure to keep the most delicate elements of the negotiations out of the press was one of the elements that led to Letermes first resignation on August the 24th.

5. Hotel Conrad, Avenue Louise, Brussels, August the 8th

In an attempt to flee the press at the gates of Hertoginnedal, Yves Leterme decided on August the 8th to trade places. He met with the presidents of the two Walloon parties, Jöëlle Milquet and Didier Reynders, at hotel Conrad, one of the most prestigious of Brussels. But to no use: Milquet was filmed with a paper with the heading of the hotel a few hours later, and at that moment the proposal Leterme presented to her at the hotel was already published on some websites. 6. The royal castle of Ciergnon, The Ardennes in Luxemburg-province, September the 29th

In the weekend of 29 and 30 September King Albert was taking some rest to recuperate from his hip operation in the castle of Ciergnon in the Ardennes. The castle is from 1842, and Albert lived there for almost four years as a young teenager during German occupation in World War II. But on this Saturday he received the visit of Herman Van Rompuy, the new president of the Lower House and a leading Flemish christian democrat. Four weeks before the king had appointed this 'wise man' to a role of 'scout' to bring the orange-blue parties back to the table after the first failure of Leterme. Van Rompuy came to report this Saturday afternoon that he had succeeded in reaching a limited agreement on the procedure to tackle the nationalistic issues in the negotiations. In the days afterwards some of the negotiators denied that there had been any agreement. But the king accepted the report. And in the evening, after sunset and in the rain, suddenly the car of Yves Leterme entered the gates of the castle. Slightly more than an hour later he was again formateur.

7. The stands of Standard Football Club de Liège, October the 27th

Building a government is a form of team-building. It did help in the negotiations that both Yves Leterme and MR-president Didier Reynders (the two most on the right) were fans of Lièges most famous football club, Standard, located right into the ancient industrial heart of the city at the Meuse. That might seem strange for Leterme, a Flemish citizen living about 200 kilometers from Liège, but he has a French father and Standard has many Flemish fans. Other negotiators attended too. From left to right: Melchior Wathelet from the Walloon christian democrats and from Verviers, 20 km east of Liège; Patrick Dewael, from the Flemish liberal VLD and from Tongeren, 15 km to the north of Liège; Inge Vervotte from Letermes CD&V and from Mechelen; and Bart Somers, the party president of the VLD and mayor of the Flemish city of Mechelen. Standard, the leader in the Belgian competition, played against KV Mechelen that evening. The game ended in a draw: 2-2.

8. The Law Street (Wetstraat - rue de la Loi), Brussels, November the 6th

The Brussels Law Street is the heart of political Belgium with parliament and the cabinet of the prime minister (not to mention the European Commission some 500 meters to the east). Most of the pictures of the Belgian crisis have inevitably been taken there. And of course spin doctors took all kind of initiatives to put their minister or party leader into an original picture pose (it is well known they stop their car beyond the corner to make a seemingly spontaneous walk towards the waiting camera's). The price for the most impressive scenery goes to the picture above, when the Flemish delegation leaders at the negotiations synchronised their walk in the Law Street (again after sunset) and came out of the darkness to stand as a united Flemish front shoulder to shoulder in forefront of the camera's before meeting the formateur. Something their Walloon counterparts never succeeded in (or may not have considered to do, of course). 9. The Commission of the Interior of the Lower House, The Europe-Room in the Palace of the Nation, Law Street, Brussels, November the 7th.

It looks like a normal voting scene in a normal parliament, but this image is forever (or at least for a couple of days) engraved into the minds of French-speaking politicians and many citizens as 'la giffle' (the slap in the face). For the first time in living memory the Flemish majority in parliament decided a question on a nationalistic issue - the division of the bilingual electoral district of Brussels-Hal-Vilvorde - with a unilalteral vote, after the Walloon politicians had left the commission. Emotions went high that day, not the least because the extreme right and extreme Flemish nationalists of Vlaams Belang were sitting on the first row, apparently as a kind of vanguard of all Flemish politicians. But the discussions rapidly calmed down after everyone realized that it was only a commission-vote, and that specific constitutional procedures to protect the French-speaking minority of the country would enable the Walloons to delay a final vote on the issue for almost 18 months.

10. La branche d'Olivier, brasserie, Englandstreet 172, Uccle, a southern suburb of Brussels, November the 22th

After the vote in parliament on November the 7th it took 15 days before the Walloon politicians were ready to sit openly at the same table with their Flemish counterparts again. Meanwhile the king had appointed two mediators, Armand De Decker, the president of the Upper House, and again Herman Van Rompuy ,as mediators to help Yves Leterme. Dedecker, who lives in Uccle (Ukkel in Dutch), suggested one of his favourite restaurants around the corner to organise the meeting. And so the orange-blue negotiations took an umpteeth start that evening. The food seems to have been excellent, the discussions lasted till half past one, but a breakthrough was not in the cards.

11. Hof ter Vrijlegem, farm-hotel, Mollem, a Flemish village to the northwest of Brussels, November the 25th

Still in search for a discreet location to negotiate a final breakthrough in their never-ending negotiations, Yves Leterme and the four party-presidents of the orange-blue coalition made their way on Sunday - again after sunset - to the bucolic location of Mollem, only 20 kilometers from the Grand Market in Brussels. They met at Hof ter Vrijlegem, a farm turned into a small hotel (rooms from 70 € onwards) and with dining and meeting facilities. The diner-negotiation lasted beyond midnight. But at the end the participants left with a feeling that they finally had reached an agreement on a time-table for negotiations on constitutional reform.

12. Hotel Bristol, Avenue Louise, Brussels, November the 28th

The agreement (still with a few brackets of disagreement) of Sunday did not hold. On Monday evening - still after sunset - it was refuted by the Flemish nationalist N-VA, the cartel partner of Letermes CD&V. That party did not participate directly in the last negotiations, but was thought to be represented by CD&V-president Jo Vandeurzen. So there followed another night, on Wednesday, in another hotel. This time it was the Bristol, on the Avenue Louise again, but slightly less prestigious than the Conrad. Discussions were head-on, and although N-VA-president Bart Dewever again did not participate in the negotiations, he was present in a nearby room to be consulted whenever necessary. Nobody left before 3.30 p.m. And this time there was a feeling that final failure after 170 days was the most probable outcome. 13. The temporary party-headquarters of the Flemish christian democrats, Brussels road 806, Zellik, a suburban village on the westside of Brussels, December the 1st

Shortly before their election victory the Flemish christian democrats of Yves Leterme left their party headquarters in the Brussels Law Street 89. The building needed to be renovated. They were for a while in search of a good replacement, and finally found one at the local headquarters of their provincial party of Vlaams-Brabant in Zellik. The place soon was to appear almost every week on tv, because crucial meeting after crucial meeting took place. On Saturday the 1st December it was there that Yves Leterme was received at 4 p.m. after he had returned from Belvedere-castle where had handed down his resignation to the King. His fellow-partymen received their leader with applause and Leterme had a difficult emotional moment. But the applause could not hide that this was a dull room in a dull building on the dull old road from Brussels to Gent in a dull suburban village. The 800.000 votes of Yves Leterme were not turned into power. They seemed a distant memory, as far away as the one of The Claridge, the flashy disco under the Madou Tower on June the 10th.

14. Clos St.Denis, two stars restaurant, Vliermaal in Limburg-province between Hasselt and Liège, Sunday the 2nd of December.

As the christian democrats were still considering the reasons why they failed in their attempt to become the ever-leading party of Belgium again, the liberals decided it was their turn. The leaders of the Walloon MR and of the Flemish VLD met each other - of course after sunset - at restaurant Clos St.Denis to discuss how they could take the initiative. Among them, for the first time in months, was outgoing prime minister Guy Verhofstadt. He was received and sent out by King Albert the next day to inform him about an eventual way out of the crisis. With the liberals instead of the christian democrats in the driver's seat, a style-break was in the making. After all, the Clos StDenis is one of the finest restaurants of Belgium, with two stars in the Guide Michelin. Far more expensive of course than the farm-hotel of Yves Leterme, but probably also far more surprising than the dull luxury hotels of the Avenue Louise ...

Come and see ...

Background: is this the real life, is this just phantasy?

Tomorrow a hundred days will have gone by since the elections of June the 10th in Belgium, and negotiations for the formation of a new government have still not really started. But how worrying, how deep is the Belgian crisis? Since a few weeks foreign correspondents in Brussels – there are a few thousands of them, mainly to cover the European commission and parliament – have started to file stories about the break-up of their host-country. But oddly enough, in the 177 year old nation that seems to fall apart, no bloodshed, no riots, no protest are to be reported. Not even a demonstration larger than the usual twenty nationalistic hotheads. How real then is this story? The political stalemate in the country is unprecedented, but few people let their sleep over it. Some passionate arguments about Flemish and Walloons filters through in the newspapers, but the television-talkshows still think the subject will not make them cash in more viewers. In search for an explanation many commentators call for the late surrealist and Brussels painter René Magritte: ceci n’est pas une crise. But there are serious analysts too who defend the thesis that all the nationalistic rhetoric is nothing but a cover-up for personal ambitions or ideological preferences that have to be hidden, at least for the moment. For personal ambitions they look to Didier Reynders, the leader of the Walloon liberals (picture: the man in the middle). He is still minister of Finance in the outgoing government and a shrewd politician from Liège who would love to become the first Walloon prime minister of the country in 34 years. Analysts who see in this ambition the linchpin of the crisis point to the provocative comments that Reynders uttered each time the Walloon christian democrats were about to give in. In that way he torpedoed every chance of success of the main candidate for prime ministership, Yves Leterme, during the forty days that the latter was formateur. No, no, other analysts say. This is above all an old Belgian story. Each time a governement of christian democrats and liberals is made possible by the electorate, the union wing of both the socialists and the christian democrats will do everything to impede it. This happened in 1977, 1987 and 1992, and is happening now again. Look to the behaviour of the Walloon christian democrats, says the argument, who are refusing every compromise on the nationalistic issue. And they will probably continue to do so until the other parties accept that the Walloon socialists are invited to the negotiating table. For this latter thesis exists a Flemish variation. Ever since the introduction of universal suffrage there has always been a strong majority of the left in Wallony. In Flanders it was usual centre-right majorities that the electorate turned out, sometimes interrupted by moves to the centre-left. Since the national parties have split in Flemish and Walloon wings in the nineteen seventies every formation of a federal government has therefore been a match of armwristing: shall the coalition be centre-right (good for Flemish voters) or centre-left (good for Walloon voters). For 27 of the last 35 years this resulted in centre-left federal governments. When between 1981 and 1987 a centre right government came into power to tackle an extreme budgettary crisis, it was highly popular in Flanders and extremely unpopular in Wallony. The result was that the Walloon socialist, then in the opposition, rose to almost 50 % of the Walloon votes in 1987. The Walloon christian democrats made the government fall after only two of the four years in its second term, formally on a nationalistic issue. There is also a third analysis about the present crisis. This one is mainly to be heard in Walloon media. In this scenario the villain is Bart de Wever, the president of the Flemish nationalist N-VA(picture: the man on the left: the man on the right is the president of his cartel partner CD&V, Jo Vandeurzen). This rather small party formed a cartel with the CD&V of Yves Leterme. Together they became stronger than apart, and in an orange-blue majority the five or six seats the N-VA obtained on June the 10th are needed to obtain a majority in parliament. Now, say the analysts, de Wever is an advocate of Flemish independence – he acknowledged many times that this will be the outcome of history – so it is logic that he defends his nationalistic demands so sharply as to prevent a compromise and bring his ultimate goal nearer. De Wever, by the way, denies. The future will show whatever analysis was the right one. But all of these theses demonstrate again that the nationalistic issue only becomes a political hot spot when it gets mixed with other themes. But the reverse is also true: if it should be true that the politicians play the nationalitic card to hide some more trivial political ambitions, they never are fully sure how long they ride tiger and when the tiger starts to ride them. The breaking-up of countries has never been a simple rational affair, and, although everything is still remarkably quiet in Belgium, in the present stalemate and uncertainty every unexpected or even stupid incident can start a process that nobody will be able to control.

Old quarrel, new twist (2): a short history of the conflict between Flemish and Walloon conflict (background)

The language conflict in Belgium seemed almost solved around 1990. But the growing economic gap between Flanders and Wallony added new fire to the nationalistic tensions.

In 1989 for the first time long and difficult negotiations were held about dividing parts of the national treasury into regional ones. This led the then chief-minister of Flanders to say that ‘Belgium is a country with two different economic speeds.’ Around 1970 Flanders, backward and mainly agricultural in the 19^th century, had surpassed Wallony in economic strength. The former now obtained most of the foreign investments, whereas the latter had steadily declined since the high-days of its textile, steel and coal-industries around 1900.

Just as old the language-conflict was about to be solved, this growing economic split gave a new twist to the legacy of nationalist tensions. In a first reaction to the decline of their region, around 1970, the dominant socialists in Wallony under the leadership of André Cools had decided to cooperate in the process of devolution. They were driven by the belief that they could follow their own socialist path towards recovery without further intervention from Brussels. A quarter of a century later, with unemployment above 20 % and still rising, this proved to be an illusion. It ended in corruption scandals, clientelism and the murder in 1991 of Cools just outside the appartment of his mistress in Liege.

Gradually the Walloon politicians gave up on devolution.

Their own success, the strains of a long budgetary crisis between 1980 and 1995 and no doubt also some arrogance about their economic achievements, made the Flemish grow increasingly impatient about the inability of Walloon politicians to clean up their mess. The idea of breaking Flanders apart from Belgium was absurd as long as the late Soviet Union held more than a million soldiers at 400 kilometers of the Belgian border. But it became a debatable issue among Dutch-speaking politicians and journalists in 1992, when nationalist tensions inside Belgium were running high again and Czechoslovakia broke up peacefully. Flemish independence was picked up as a demand by the extreme-right party of Vlaams Blok, which won votes in each election from 1985 onwards – mainly riding on the immigration-issue - to reach a peak of 24 % in the whole of Flanders in regional elections in 2004.

The situation has not much changed since 1990. The recovery of Wallony is still too weak to keep unemployment under 15 %. Last year the Walloon socialists were rocked by another huge scandal in the main Walloon city of Charleroi. Meanwhile they also succeeded in raising the level of unemployment in Brussels to 20 %, largely by stimulating the immigration of tens of thousands unskilled immigrants from North and black Africa. Due to the high level of the minimum wage, no official work is available for them.

Impatience in Flanders grew year by year stronger and resulted in ever-sharper demands for devolution. But this Flemish radicalization, combined with a homegrown sentiment of despair, confirmed both the Walloon population and the politicians in their stubbornness to refuse every form of new constitutional reforms. Surely, the antagonism is far from general, and in both communities many contest the wisdom of putting politics in a one-dimensional nationalist perspective. Nevertheless the 6 million Dutch-speaking and 4 million French-speaking Belgians have never been as much apart as today.

Old quarrel, new twist (1): a short history of the conflict between Flemish and Walloons (background) ,

Language incidents on the territory of what is today Belgium have existed at least since the middle Ages. But the nationality-conflict between Flemish and Walloons, as it unfolds today, is not much more than a century old.

Belgium as in independent state came into existence in 1830 after its territory had been a military vacuum and the most intricate diplomatic headache of Western Europe for almost 200 years (picture: fighting between revolutionaries and the regular army at the Royal square in Brussels in September 1830). But between 1848 and 1914 it was one of the most successful nations on earth, with the second industrial economy after Britain and successive liberal governments (even when they were from the catholic party). The ruling bourgeois class spoke French, as the self-evident language of civilization, in the same way as the bourgeois and intellectual elite of the cities in Bohemia and Poland spoke German. (for a more detailed history of the country, see the official website of the Belgian authorities).

Universal suffrage, introduced in 1893, brought the whole population into politics. It laid bare that sixty percent of the Belgians spoke Dutch, and by far the largest part of them only Dutch. Social and language emancipation henceforth went hand in hand in Flanders, and created a powerful nationalist movement.

Gradually, and never without resistance of the Walloon politicians, it saw its demands realized. Towards 1930 the principle was accepted that the country would, more or less like Switzerland, be divided in monolingual administrative units, with Dutch as the official language of the northern provinces of the country, and French of the south. Only the capital Brussels would remain bilingual.

This reform was almost completed after a formal language border was drawn in 1963 (one exception being the area around Brussels: see the previous background-article about the disputes at the heart of the stalemate). In a side effect with far-reaching consequences, all the national parties split up into Flemish and Walloon sections that rapidly estranged from each other. Henceforth each of these parties appealed to the electorate in only half the country.

In 1970 a devolution-process was started, through arduous negotiations and constitutional reforms. It led to the creation of three regional governments – in Flanders, Wallony and Brussels – but with a different structure for culture, health and education, where you had Dutch-speaking, French-speaking and German-speaking areas and governments. After education, public works, media policy, large parts of economic policy and the supervision of local authorities also became regional competences, this highly complicated structure with far too many political mandates to distribute, nevertheless succeeded in reducing nationalistic tensions.

Background: the core of the stalemate

What are the issues that have hampered the formation of a new Belgian government for now almost three months? Two disputes seem almost unsolvable.

The central issue is how much devolution Belgium can swallow without becoming itself irrelevant as a state, and where the financial responsibilities in this process of devolution lie. A smaller, but more thorny question is where the last stroke of the now 44 years old language-border between Flanders, Wallony and the bilingual city-region of Brussels should be drawn.

The core of the Belgian conflict today is a real collision of minds. The Flemish parties want the 37 years old process of devolution of the country to continue, the more, the better. Their Walloon counterparts refuse even to discuss the issue.

Differing interests are at stake. The main demand of the Flemish is that each of the three regions should become responsible for its own employment policy. By extension this could – but should not necessarily - mean that wage policy (yes, Belgium still does have a national wage policy) and unemployment benefits would also be decentralized.

With a weaker economy and an unemployment level more than twice as high as in Flanders, the leaders of both the Brussels and Walloon region (picture by Philipp Melke : the still very much decrepit former steel-and-coal city of Seraing in Wallony) refuse to debate the issue. Even an implicit promise of the Flemish christian democrat leader Yves Leterme in July that Flanders did want to leave solidarity intact – Belgium-speak for: will continue to subsidise Walloon and Brussels unemployment – could not change their minds. And inevitably this discussion raises nationalist fevers that go far beyond the original issue.

The other stumbling-block is the question of Brussels-Halle-Vilvoorde. That is the largest electoral district of Belgium, with almost 15 % of the total population in it. It consists of both the bilingual region of Brussels and the arrondissement of Halle-Vilvoorde. The latter is officialy a Flemish administrative unit, but it has many French-speaking citizens and even a few villages where Walloon parties make up the majority in the village council.

Through the one large electoral district the French-speaking political big shots of Brussels can mobilize French-speaking voters in Halle-Vilvoorde. The Flemish parties say that in order to win these votes the Brussels politicians make promises about the possibility to continue to use French in an unrestricted way, even when one lives in the Flemish part of the country. Halle-Vilvoorde has been officially Dutch since in 1963 an administrative language-border in Belgium was created to separate villages and cities with Dutch as official language from the ones using French. But this principle is constantly undermined as French-speaking families in Brussels leave the centre of the capital by thousands to buy their own house on the cheaper grounds of the Flemish villages around the capital.

The question of dividing the electoral district remained largely unsolved through a bad compromise in 1963. And although nowadays along most of the language border there are no more conflicts between Dutch- and French-speaking citizens, there are still six villages around the Brussels region where tensions sometimes run high. Hundred years ago these six were rural Flemish villages, but today at least three of them are ruled by French-speaking maiors and aldermen.

In practice the disputes are over the languages of local schools and libraries, the number of French or Dutch tv-stations on cable-tv, the language used in ambulances and hospitals and so on. Add to this a high degree of nationalistic rethoric on both sides, that was enflamed again by a ruling of the Constitional Court in 2003 on an electoral reform law, and one understands why this local problem has become one of the most hotly debated issues in Belgium.

About none of these thorny questions even the slightest progress has been made in the 87 days of government negotiations since the elections of June the 10^th. And one should keep in mind that these nationality-questions always get intermingled with ideological ones.

In that sense it became clear during the negotiatons that the Walloon liberals of the MR were less radical in their refusal to speak about devolution than the Walloon christian democrats of CDH. The former are ready to accept some restrictions on Belgiums very generous unemployment benefits, but would rather see these imposed through decisions of the federal government than through a proces of devolution.

CDH, who is more left than right and is in a coalition with the socialists in the Walloon region, does not want to speak about either of these measures. It is, in Belgian politics and certainly in center-parties like the christian democrats, not uncommon to mask an ideological choice with a strong nationalist stance. One should never dismiss the interpretation that CDH just took the hard line on the nationality-questions to avoid saying explicitly that it dislikes a coalition with the liberals.