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An end to the stalemate

Belgium’s new interim dispensation, headed by the outgoing liberal Prime Minister Guy Verhofstadt and drawn from rival parties representing the two main linguistic regions, ends a six-month political stalemate. The deadlock in the formation of government by the victors in the June 2007 elections — constituents of the so-called “orange-blue” umbrella coalition — reflects the strains experienced by the Belgians in the country’s evolution f rom a unitary to a federal system. Talks on a common programme broke down on at least four occasions and the Flemish Christian Democrat leader and potential prime minister had to step down twice as the official negotiator. His party’s cohabitation with the far-right secessionist and anti-immigrant ally on an agenda of self-rule for the Dutch-speaking Flanders in the north is at the root of the current crisis.

Another sticking point in the conservative-led coalition has been the demand for the bifurcation of the electoral district of the Brussels Capital Region, where French is the language of the majority and where the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation has its headquarters. After gaining independence from the Netherlands in 1830, Belgium’s predominantly French and Dutch populations co-existed in the cosy political comfort of the uniquely Belgian consociational model of democracy, characterised by mutual accommodation among political elites. This phase of innocence eventually gave way to the assertion of competing demands for linguistic and cultural autonomy from the mid-20th century, culminating in a series of constitutional reforms from 1970 that led towards a federation of power-sharing arrangements. Extreme nationalist forces have sought to exploit the economic backwardness of the French-dominated areas for articulating separatist claims of the prosperous Flanders. To suggest a break-up of the country, as commentators have tended to do, is perhaps premature, if not downright naïve, and it exaggerates the importance of the far-right that is a fringe element. Belgium’s formidable centrist and left forces may well rise to contain this misapprehension.

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