Belgium does not make many headlines globally. Other than hazy images of beer and chocolate, the tiny, 10-million-strong country most often evokes a sense of genteel boredom. But beneath its waffle-scented serenity, Belgium seethes with communal tensions that raise persistent questions regarding the continued viability of the country, which, in turn, create doubts about the broader European project.
The primary rift in this 180-year-old nation is linguistic, a divide overlaid and emphasised by geography and differing levels of economic development. The north of the country is home to a fiscally conservative, prosperous Dutch (Flemish)-speaking population, a region called Flanders. The south, a socialist and economically decrepit area know as Wallonia, is dominated by French speakers.
In all there are some 6.5 million Flemings to 4 million Walloons. A strict linguistic apartheid operates between the two regions with everything from schools and shops to road signs rendered in Dutch in Flanders and in French in Wallonia. Political parties are not national, but Flemish or Walloon, and north and south vote separately.
The Flemish resentment of the Walloons has long roots. For decades after the Belgium state was first established, the Dutch-speaking population of the country was forced to adopt French which was elevated to the language of administration and public life, while the Francophone within Belgium rarely made the effort to learn Dutch.
The fear of a French-colonisation of Flanders persists till today although the economic fortunes of the two regions have reversed. Once prosperous, industrial Wallonia now suffers from high levels of unemployment and economic stagnation, while once poor Flanders is rich and entrepreneurial. But, although the two communities operate in large part as separate entities, the country’s welfare system is funded federally, which in practice means that Flanders pays for Wallonia’s pensions and health care.
The linguistic battles between the two communities have led to a volatile politics, characterised by a frequent collapse of government. The most recent such collapse took place in April this year, precipitating fresh elections on June 13. Once again, it resulted in a deeply divided Parliament, with Flemish separatists winning in the north and Francophone socialists in the south. Forming a coalition could now take several months.
The last time elections were held in Belgium in 2007, the country was without a government for almost 300 days. Many believe that before long Belgium is likely to split into separate nations.
From an Indian perspective, Belgium’s woes are puzzling. In India, we balance 22 official languages and almost all Indians are multilingual. The diversity that citizens negotiate on a daily basis is moreover scarcely confined to the linguistic. We are a country of lily-white Kashmiris and coffee-hued Malyalis; of fish-eating Bengalis and herbivorous Gujratis. In our “Hindu” country, there are almost as many Muslims as in all of Pakistan. With no single language, ethnicity, religion or food, India’s existence is immensely more complicated than Belgium’s.
And yet, somehow, they are unable to function as a nation. The Walloons rarely bother learning Dutch and the Flemings can’t find it in their hearts to live next to French speakers. Meanwhile, the rich north of the country resents spending its hard-earned money to support what they see as the lazy, left-leaning unemployed of the south.
More worrying is what Belgium’s dysfunctionality says about Europe as a whole. Europe is the birthplace of the “nation state.” Carved out of the multi-cultural fabric of the empires that once cut across the continent, modern European countries are based on the idea of one ethnicity, one religion, one language, one nation. Such homogeneity is, of course, an ideal rather than a reality; Spain with its Catalan and Basque minorities being an obvious exception, yet the fundamental idea of “oneness” that underpins European nation states makes negotiating diversity particularly problematic for them.
The creation of the European Union (EU), a hugely ambitious project, could have conceivably helped provide solutions to this problem. The EU is polyphonic with 23 official languages and its ideal of “unity in diversity” is identical to that of India. Driven by the idea that in a new world order Europe must find strength in cooperation, thereby ditching old tribal identities, opening up once insular borders to outside influences and demonstrating solidarity with others within the region, the EU could potentially be a model for a post nation-state world and new multicultural identities.
But unlike India, which despite occasional communal violence and serial coalition governments, faces the twenty first century with confidence and strength, the EU is floundering.
Popular support for the project remains weak. Decades of Europe-wide institution building have largely failed to create a European identity. An even greater failure has been the ability to integrate and absorb non-European ethnicities and religions. Islamophobia is fast on the way to becoming accepted as a mainstream sentiment. Moreover, even the ideal of “solidarity” has been exposed as hollow by the German reaction to the sovereign debt crisis in Greece. The EU faces challenges from every direction.
The current turmoil in Belgium exemplifies many of these and the future of this small country might be an indicator of things to come for the EU as a whole. Belgium is a proof of how difficult resolving the cultural gulf between north and south Europe will be. Even within a single country, large-scale transfers of wealth from north to south, in this case Flanders to Wallonia, are so deeply unpopular that they threaten the dissolution of the nation.
But, if the Flemish find it impossible to help their own countrywomen, expecting Germany to pay up for the debts of Greece and Portugal is highly unrealistic.
Whether Belgium makes it through the next few years intact is unlikely to have major repercussions around the world. But the manner in which Belgium’s future plays out could be a reflection of what path the EU as a whole may go down, the economic and geo-strategic consequences of which will certainly be weighty.
In the short term, Belgium’s shenanigans will only be an embarrassment. From July 1, Belgium has taken over the rotating presidency of the EU. Always quick to present itself to others as a model of regional cooperation, the EU is thus presided over by a country that can’t even get its own two communities to co-operate enough to have a government.
Pallavi Aiyar, Business Standard’s Brussels correspondent, moved to Europe recently after more than six years in China
