4 posts tagged “belgium”
I don't know what to write about on my comet blog at the moment, so I'll write about the weather. Seems like spring has come to Belgium: the decorative shrub in front of my office window is becoming green again, and the first flowers are peeking up in the garden. Nice!
In the last episode I told you how Belgium manages to cope with only six governments for ten milion people. This time we’re going to take a look at the political parties who are all trying their hardest to be in these governments.
As with most European countries, there are four major political factions: Greens, Socialists/Social-democrats, Christian-democrats and what we call the Liberals (but in the classic sense: individual and economic freedom). These four are all represented as political parties, but with a twist: there are two versions of each one of them, a Dutch speaking and a French speaking one.
Green Social-democrats Christian-democrats Liberals
Dutch Agalev SP.a CD&V VLD
French Ecolo PS cdH MR
Then there are several minor parties, not all of whom have an exact opposite:
- Vlaams Belang: far-right, want an independent Flanders, anti-immigrant. They get about 20% of the vote in Flanders and are isolated by the other parties.
- Spirit & NVA: both heirs of the late Volksunie party, that also wanted an independent Flanders. Internal tensions lead to a rift and the formation of the leftist Spirit and the rightist NVA. Both joined electoral cartels, Spirit with the SP.a and NVA with CD&V.
- PvdA: Communists, Dutch speaking
- PdT: Communists, French speaking
- BUB: tiny party devoted to unionism (keeping Belgium united instead of granting Wallonia and Flanders independence). This party is one of the few that is not split among regional lines. It is also one of the few parties that if they ever find a fourth guy could play cards...
- ...
In the end it leads to wonderful coalition governments, sometimes even differing on federal and regional levels. For example, Flanders is ruled by a three-party coalition of CD&V, VLD and SP.a, but the federal government consists of four parties: VLD and MR with SP.a and PS.
Basically, the Socialists want to make everything free (health-care, public transport, education...) while the pro-business Liberals want to have a flat-tax (the same percentage for everyone). The Christian Democrats, meanwhile, want respect for values and people.
The end result is mostly that every year the tax man respectfully asks the people for more of their money to fund all the stuff they are getting ‘for free’, thus making (in theory) everybody happy.
Okay, what more can I write about the funny little country I live in? The one thing that never ceases to amaze foreigners when I tell them about it, is how Belgium is organized politically.
Basically, we are a federal state, with a constitutional monarchy. Sounds straightforward enough, no? But it gets complicated: Belgium has had a long history of language-related problems between French speakers and Dutch speakers. This resulted in the creation of ‘regions’ and ‘communities’. A ‘region’ is a territorial entity with it’s own institutions, and is responsible for ‘territorial’ matters (roads, infrastructure, agriculture...). A ‘community’ is a linguistic entity, and is responsible for ‘personal’ matters (education, culture...).
So, if you are counting, that makes for three regions and three communities. Three regions? Indeed: Brussels, the capital, is territorially an enclave of Dutch-speaking Flanders. But since the majority of the population in Brussels speaks French, a Belgian solution was found, and they made the city and nineteen surrounding communities into a full-fledged region (with a government, parliament, the whole shebang, on top of the twenty mayors and city councils). And there are three communities: don’t forget the tiny German-speaking minority!
For example, a French speaker in Brussels drives on roads built and maintained by the Brussels region and goes to schools maintained by the French community. But the Flemish speaker next door goes to Flemish community/region schools (using the same roads). And they both pay federal taxes (part of which is then given to the communities/regions).
So, for a population of ten million, that makes seven governments and parliaments. Don’t forget: there is also the Federal level, just like in the U.S. But seven is too much, even for Belgian standards. That is why the Flemish community and region were fused into one entity. This left Belgium with only six governments and parliaments to cope with its legislative needs.
To address the looming shortage of enough laws and legislation, a bid was made to make Brussels the capital of the European Union. And lucky us! It worked! Now we’ll never have to fear a red tape shortage ever again!
Join us in the exiting next episode of Belgium for Beginners, where I explain the many and multicoloured political parties thriving in these unique institutions...
Flag of Belgium
Map of Belgium
First of all, Belgium is small. Only 10.000.000 inhabitants, less than half of the population of metropolitan New York. The country is roughly triangular in shape, with the longest distance from border to border being about 300 km. (250 miles?). You can drive the entire lenght of Belgium in about three or four hours (for a small country, we have a lot of highways too).
We have about 60 km. of shoreline (on the North Sea). Our neighbours include France, the Grand-Duchy of Luxemburg (now they are really a small country, see map), Germany and The Netherlands.
With the exception of Luxemburg, we have been invaded by, ruled over, occupied by or been part of about all our neighbouring countries at one time or another during our history. But also by Spain, Austria and the Roman Empire.
Every Belgian schoolchild knows the famous words spoken about the tribe of the Belgians by Julius Caesar, the Roman conqueror: 'Of all the Gauls, the Belgians are the bravest'. Not many of them know that the quote goes on and says: '... because they are furthest removed from civilization and have not been weakened by trade and culture'.
As a country, Belgium only exists since 1830, when independence was declared from the Netherlands. The first thing we did was to invite an unemployed German prince to become king (Leopold I) and we have had a constitutional monarchy under the Von Saksen-Coburg dynasty ever since.
Three official languages are spoken:
- Dutch, in the North (Flanders), by about 60% of the population
- French, in the South (Wallonia), by about 39% of the population
- German, in the East, by about 1% of the population
(German is spoken mainly in a small cluster of villages that Belgium took from Germany after World War One. The inhabitants were at first reluctant to be Belgian, but after World War Two they assured everyone they were not really Germans afert all.)
This concludes my first article about Belgium. Let me know in the comments if you found it interesting, and I might write a bit more about this weird little country.
