Interessant : Guardian interviewt (o.a.) Vlaamsgezinden en burgemeester Rode

[evilbu]

http://observer.guardian.co.uk/world...170156,00.html

The mayor is a little uncomfortable. 'Could we go somewhere more private to talk?' begs Myriam Delacroix-Rolin. 'This cafe is Flemish-owned. These days things have become so sensitive. I should not be heard speaking French in there.'
On Tuesday, Belgium marks its first 100 days without a government. There is every reason to believe that the Belgians, and the rest of us, will have to get used to it. The questions now are how will the divorce of Flanders and Wallonia be consummated, and what will become of Brussels, home to the EU and Nato? More worryingly, the demise of Belgium - a sticking plaster over the faultline between Europe's Protestant north and Catholic south - could make Europe a more dangerous place.

'Flanders has systematically organised its independence over 35 years,' said Delacroix-Rolin, a French-speaker fighting to save her village of Rhode Saint Genese, nine miles south of Brussels, from becoming Flemish. 'If they succeed here, they will move on to Brussels. We're like the moat around the castle.'
French-speaking Brussels - whose cultural and linguistic affinity is with Wallonia to the south - sits like an island in Flemish-speaking Flanders. So do the 18,000 souls of Rhode. Delacroix-Rolin said of the French-speaking half of her village: 'We are bilingual, and that is our right. No one held a referendum to ask whether we wanted to be part of Flanders. We just woke up one day [in 1962] and the linguistic frontier had been drawn south of us.'
In the 45 years since, Belgium as a state, steered by the economically and numerically superior Flemish, has effectively devolved itself out of existence. 'Now Flanders with six million people makes the rules and four million French-speakers adapt,' said Delacroix-Rolin, who is banned from speaking French at council meetings or official functions. 'They are very clever. My council does not use language criteria to allocate housing, but the region does. In this way Flanders is ensuring that more Flemish-speakers settle in my municipality. The region also imposes a language test on teachers seeking to work here or parents wishing to adopt children. One way or another, your route is barred unless you have Dutch language diplomas.'
It used to be the opposite. During centuries of Walloon prosperity - including 200 years as Europe's most productive mining and steel basin - the Flemish were looked down on and their language banned. Recently they have gained the economic upper hand, and now see post-industrial Wallonia as a costly passenger. This centuries-old distrust is at the heart of the crisis that has seen the Flemish Christian Democrat, Yves Leterme, fail to form a government since the 10 June elections. The constitution demands a coalition, but French-speaking politicians are refusing to join in his plans to dismantle Belgium. Among Leterme's allies, Flemish nationalist Bart de Wever denies that Wallonia will be cast adrift. 'You can co-operate better as good neighbours than as an unhappily married couple. I'm not a Flemish Milosevic.'
He adds that an independent Flanders would want Brussels as its capital. 'Ten years ago Belgium had its football team, its monarchy, the Belgian franc and Brussels. Now it only has Brussels. For us, it's just the last obstacle.' Increasingly, Flemish politicians speak of the 'Czechoslovakia option' and point to the fact that the 'velvet' break-up in 1993 was a success for both sides. But economically it is hard to imagine what the wastelands of Wallonia would stand to gain. An opinion poll last month found 45 per cent of Flemish people in favour of the disintegration of Belgium against 20 per cent of Walloons.
Most observers believe the break-up is just a matter of time; Flemish nationalist support will grow every time there is a local or national election. But nothing will happen without the EU, to which an independent Flanders, with Brussels as its capital, would have to apply for membership. To Delacroix-Rolin, the options on the table amount to real threats to her identity and that of her villagers. 'Rhode is like a frontline state. We're in a battle for survival.'

http://www.guardian.co.uk/internatio...170606,00.html

'Belgium? Something that does not exist' Political fault lines divide nation



[FONT=arial,helvetica,sans-serif][SIZE=3]Long-running crisis could lead to nation separating into Flanders and Wallonia[/SIZE][/FONT]

[FONT=Geneva,Arial,sans-serif][SIZE=2]Ian Traynor in Steenokkerzeel
Monday September 17, 2007
The Guardian

[/SIZE][/FONT]
Willy the florist has had enough of his kingdom. He is an unwilling subject of an unloved country. A middle-class father of 12-year-old twins running a thriving flower business in this small Dutch-speaking town on the eastern fringe of Brussels, Willy is reduced to obscene gesturing by the very mention of his country.
"Belgium?" he splutters. "That's something that doesn't exist. The national anthem? Nobody knows it. Nobody can sing it. The king? A parvenu. A dysfunctional family. We're not going to take it any more."

Willy is Flemish and proud of it. His native language is Dutch but like many Belgians he also speaks French and English. When he goes into Brussels on business, he complains, they call him a racist if he speaks in his own tongue.
He says French-speaking nurses wouldn't help his Dutch-speaking boy in hospital recently. And his comatose 80-year-old neighbour who was rushed to hospital? Same story. His wife didn't speak French and the doctors wouldn't speak Dutch. And if Willy - "don't use my full name, I've got a business to run here" - needs to go to court, that too will be in Brussels and the judges will speak French.
"The Flemish have shut up for too long. But now it's come to the point where we're not stupid any more. This country's sick. It's dying. Not right away. But it's terminal. Little by little, it's over. We will separate in the end."
A whiff of the Balkans is wafting through the heart of the EU. Belgium, a kingdom created by the great powers 177 years ago to keep the Dutch in their place and as a buffer between France and Germany, is falling apart.
It has always been a battlefield. From Waterloo to Passchendaele and the Ardennes, the superpowers of their day brought their wars to Belgium. Now Belgium is under attack from within.
"There's no Belgian sentiment," says Filip Dewinter, the leader of the Vlaams Belang party of extreme Flemish nationalists. "There's no Belgian language. There's no Belgian nation. There's no Belgian anything."
Plausible
Earlier this week, Mr Dewinter tried to gather support for a referendum on independence for Flanders, the larger, wealthier northern part of Belgium. His attempt in the Flemish parliament failed because the mainstream parties do not want to be associated with a party viewed as extremist, racist and rabble-rousing.
But opinion polls show support for an independent Flanders running at over 40% and rising. A country called Flanders is an entirely plausible prospect - a wealthy, successful, diligent country of six million. A smaller version of Holland. The mainstream Flemish parties currently struggling to form a government are also nationalist.
The crisis is a result of political failure and lack of leadership in a small country top-heavy with politicians. In a Belgium of 10.5 million people, there are 11 parties in the national parliament. Then there are another five parliaments organised on regional and linguistic criteria. There is not a single national politician or leader (bar King Albert) or a single national political party that straddles the linguistic and cultural north-south divide between Flanders and the southern region of francophone Wallonia.
"I don't know any federal state where you don't have national parties. Here the parties are purely local," says André Sapir, head of the Bruegel think tank in Brussels. "We are a federal state, but we have less and less of a common political framework."
Defining "Belgianness" is becoming a sorry national sport with loyalists struggling to come up with unifying factors or symbols that reinforce national identity apart from the underwhelming national football team or the royal family.
Geert Beekkman, however, is a Fleming who prefers a united Belgium to an independent Flanders. The air traffic controller at Brussels airport blames the crisis on the country's elites.
"How can you divide a country of 10 million into two countries? And what do you do about Brussels? It's the politicians. They've just decided it's better to split the country."
Indeed, it's the political paralysis that is producing a Balkanised Belgium. One hundred days after national elections, Belgium is rudderless, its rival Dutch- and French-speaking politicians unable to agree on a new coalition of Christian Democrats and Liberals.
The Flemish Christian Democrat leader, Yves Leterme, won the elections and should be the new prime minister. But he is unacceptable to the Walloons because he is an ardent champion of greater autonomy for Flanders.
The Walloons want to keep Belgium because they get much more out of it. The public sector is twice as big in Wallonia as in Flanders, unemployment at 17% is also double the Flemish rate. Flanders is wealthy, successful, bigger and votes for the right, complaining endlessly that it is being hobbled by transfers of public money to Wallonia, which is smaller, poorer and tends to vote for the left.
French-speaking socialists have run Wallonia for a long time (although they lost in June) and Flemish nationalists quip that Wallonia is the last Soviet republic in Europe.
Parallel worlds
The verbal abuse on both sides is turning nasty. Many Flemish disparage the Walloons as lazy spongers who are too stupid to learn Dutch. Historically, the French speakers were the Belgian elite, lording it over the Flemish whom they viewed as country bumpkins. Beyond Brussels, the French- and the Dutch-speakers inhabit parallel worlds that rarely intersect or integrate.
The tectonic plates of Germanic and Latin Europe rub up against each other along the line that separates Flanders from Wallonia just south of Brussels. The tremors are getting worse.
As the estrangement deepens, the city of Brussels runs in the opposite direction as Belgium's melting pot, which immensely complicates the strategies of separatists. The prospering EU capital is also home to Nato headquarters and a large immigrant population mainly from central Africa. Historically, Brussels is a Flemish city, but now it is a large French-speaking enclave in Flanders.
If push comes to shove, neither side would surrender Brussels, fuelling talk of extra-territoriality, turning the city into a post-national "capital of Europe". "Brussels is the last obstacle," says Bart De Wever, a Flemish party leader. "We would have divorced years ago if it wasn't for Brussels."

[Bovenbuur]

De internationale pers lijkt toch een splitsing te ruiken hè?

[Eddy B]

Ik ben benieuwd naar de eventuele debatten in de EU. Daar zal toch zeker over gesproken worden! Misschien krijgt Frankrijk steun om de EU naar straatsburg te verhuizen, maar zal Luxenburg als neutraler, de jackpot winnen!

[Heftruck]

"The prospering EU capital (Brussel) .."

[Jong N-VA'er]

Verhelderend! Overal komt het splitsingsspook voor de Franstaligen meer en meer opduiken. Die sukkelaars moeten er nachtmerries van hebben

[Pieke]

"'Now Flanders with six million people makes the rules and four million French-speakers adapt"

Tragisch, echt

[C uit W]

fighting to save her village of Rhode Saint Genese, nine miles south of Brussels, from becoming Flemish

wtf??

[Thomas-]

Oorspronkelijk geplaatst door C uit W

wtf??

Leek mij ook nogal raar maar ik denk dat ze daarmee bedoelt dat ze niet wil dat Rode tot Vlaanderen gaat behoren wanneer we onafhankelijk worden.

[Jong N-VA'er]

Wanneer komt er nog eens een grote betoging in Sint-Genesius-Rode? Het dorp gaat naar de haaien daar door het Apartheidsregime van de Franstaligen daar!

[Jong N-VA'er]

Oorspronkelijk geplaatst door Thomas-

Leek mij ook nogal raar maar ik denk dat ze daarmee bedoelt dat ze niet wil dat Rode tot Vlaanderen gaat behoren wanneer we onafhankelijk worden.

Als er meer overtuigde Vlamingen dan Frantaligen daar zullen staan als het zover is, zal madam daar gauw weg zijn, mijns inziens

[Tommm]

Oorspronkelijk geplaatst door Thomas-

Leek mij ook nogal raar maar ik denk dat ze daarmee bedoelt dat ze niet wil dat Rode tot Vlaanderen gaat behoren wanneer we onafhankelijk worden.

Tja, in het buitenland beseffen ze wel dat Walen een minderheid vormen. In België schijnt men nog steeds te denken dat de arme Vlamingen(eigenlijk de rijke) onderdrukt worden door een franstalige elite(eigenlijk de zwakken van het land). Het venijnige kantje van de Vlaamsnationalisten daar zijn jullie blind voor, in het buitenland niet.

[Jong N-VA'er]

Oorspronkelijk geplaatst door Pieke

"'Now Flanders with six million people makes the rules and four million French-speakers adapt"

Tragisch, echt

Wat een giller!

[Dimitri]

But opinion polls show support for an independent Flanders running at over 40% and rising. A country called Flanders is an entirely plausible prospect - a wealthy, successful, diligent country of six million. A smaller version of Holland.

Ende verslick u niet, hollandofoben.

[evilbu]

Oorspronkelijk geplaatst door Dimitri

Ende verslick u niet, hollandofoben.

Holland is geen land.

[Eddy B]

Oorspronkelijk geplaatst door Dimitri

Ende verslick u niet, hollandofoben.

Trouwens volkomen fout. Volgens vele buitenlandse commentatoren hier op het forum, is Vlaanderen veel groter dan Holland!

[Kaal]

Het valt op hoe de buitelandse pers nuchter bericht over de feiten, ver weg van de emotionele hysterie van sommige franstaligen. In het VK heeft men geen enkel probleem om Schotland een referendum te gunnen bvb.

[Anna List]

Oorspronkelijk geplaatst door evilbu

http://observer.guardian.co.uk/world...170156,00.html


http://www.guardian.co.uk/internatio...170606,00.html

gelukkig was er dat tweede artikel om alle feitelijke fouten van het eerste goed te maken ?! wat een blunders ...

[Eddy B]

Oorspronkelijk geplaatst door Anna List

gelukkig was er dat tweede artikel om alle feitelijke fouten van het eerste goed te maken ?! wat een blunders ...

We zouden eigenlijk een rechtzetting van de feiten moeten eisen!

[Kazan]

Oorspronkelijk geplaatst door Tommm

Tja, in het buitenland beseffen ze wel dat Walen een minderheid vormen. In België schijnt men nog steeds te denken dat de arme Vlamingen(eigenlijk de rijke) onderdrukt worden door een franstalige elite(eigenlijk de zwakken van het land). Het venijnige kantje van de Vlaamsnationalisten daar zijn jullie blind voor, in het buitenland niet.

De Franstaligen vormen inderdaad een minderheid, maar betekent dat automatisch dat ze onderdrukt worden? Ik denk van niet. Het is hier net omgekeerd.

De Vlaamse overheid geeft ieder jaar 10 miljoen euro uit aan Franstalig onderwijs in de faciliteiten gemeenten. En wat krijgen de Vlamingen in Komen? Niks, de Franstaligen wouden eerst niet eens een schooltje toelaten, laat staan betalen! Wie wordt er dan onderdrukt?

Als in een normale democratie er 6 miljoen mensen zijn die een staatshervorming wensen, en 4 miljoen dat niet willen, wat gebeurt er dan?
De meerderheid wint, dat is democratisch. In ons land slaagt de minderheid erin de hele regeringsonderhandelingen te blokkeren. Wie wordt er dan onderdrukt?

Als de minderheid er jarenlang in slaagt de kieskring BHV, die ongrondwettelijk is, te behouden en een arrest van het Arbitragehof (nu Grondwettelijk Hof) naast zich neer te leggen, terwijl de meerderheid, die met 50% meer zijn, vraagt om de grondwet te respecteren en die kieskring te splitsen, wie wordt er dan onderdrukt?

Als een Vlaming 6000 stemmen meer dan een Franstalige moet halen om in het parlement te geraken, wie wordt er dan onderdrukt?

Kortom, deze minderheid lapt taalwetten en de grondwet aan zijn laars, ten nadele van de meerderheid. Hoe kan je dan zeggen dat deze meerderheid onderdrukt wordt?
Tommm, ik denk dat jij blind bent.

[Kazan]

Oorspronkelijk geplaatst door Eddy B

We zouden eigenlijk een rechtzetting van de feiten moeten eisen!

Massaal mailen naar deze kranten zou ik zeggen!