Furio Ferraresi - 07/ 2011

On 21st July Belgium celebrated its national feast in an atmosphere made gloomier by the concerns over the new stalemate in the talks over State reform, which took place in the wake of the “no” voiced by Bart De Wever’s Flemish nationalists and by Wouter Beke’s Flemish Christian Democrats to the note presented by the presented by the “trainer” Elio Di Rupo, President of the Walloons Socialists. The result of the umpteenth impasse is the return to the starting blocks, that fateful 13th June 2010, date of the last general elections and starting point of the inconclusive institutional negotiations. The government of Yves Leterme thus continues to stay in power for “current business,” while the economic crisis and the fears of a declassing of the Belgian debt would call for a real government to deal with the reform of pensions and the labour market and it should swiftly approve a strict budget law for 2012. The dramatic paradox in this new chapter of the Belgian political crisis consists in the fact that Di Rupo’s note came after the institutional notes presented in the past few months by De Wever himself and by the Flemish Socialist Johann Vande Lanotte, and after the work done by Beke; hence, by assimilating the results of the talks already performed and by realising a synthesis of the different proposals put forward by the nine parties involved in the talks, it inevitably took the appearance of a highly detailed text, not only from the political and institutional point of view (question of the bilingual constituency of Brussels-Hal-Vilhorde, statute of the region of Brussels capital, reform of federalism, transfer of the new powers to the regional bodies, etc.), but also the socio-economic one (i.e. budget rigour, solidarity, fiscal reform). It could only be so, given the acquisitions of the past talks, and indeed nearly all of the analysts were certain of the favourable opinion of the Flemish nationalists, at most with some reservations that could have become the subject of further discussions. Indeed, to say “yes, but” would simply have made possible the start up of the official talks on a text shared in its guidelines; it would thus have been the go-ahead to the talks, and certainly not the underwriting of a government pact. But the nationalists have cynically exploited the fragile balance of the note to reject it as a whole, accusing it of being an incoherent mish-mash of proposals– a “bric-à-brac,” according to De Wever –, but above all of wanting to preserve what they really do not seem to believe in any more: the unity of the Federal State. The Francophone press has branded the Flemish nationalists as “irresponsible,” but the greatest indignation has been aroused by the behaviour of the Christian Democrats, which tagged along with the decision of N-VA more out of the fear of remaining isolated in possible future negotiations without the nationalists, above all after the brave “yes” of Alexander De Croo’s Flemish Liberals, than out of a sense of real belief. De Wever, who called Di Rupo “perfidious and incompetent,” is evidently not playing with his cards laid out on the table. He states he had been obliged to say “no” owing to the lack of courage of the Socialists à la Di Rupo, but it is by now clear that his availability to compromise is equal to zero and that he aims to make the talks fail in order to reach Flanders independence in the guise of someone who did everything he could to avoid it. In the meantime Bart de Wever and Elio Di Rupo have become the icons of the ongoing clash between the Flemish and the Walloons, but also between two different political philosophies, well illustrated in two lengthy interviews to the two leaders contained in the latest issue of the French journal Politique internationale. The former is a self-proclaimed “Flemish patriot” and a Centre-Right Conservative (even with an endorsement for the UMP from Sarkozy, a “patriotic party that still believes in the national idea”); he quotes Edmund Burke, the father of conservative historicism (“a country that does not have the means to change certainly does not have the means to remain a country”), and criticises both the liberal-inspired individualism and the Socialist State centralism (but admires Gerhard Schröder, “unfairly forgotten by the Germans”), arguing the reasons of “society” and the “community,” of the ties rooted in the territory though the family, associations, school, the neighbourhood, which cannot be totalised by the State. Identity – he argues – is a “process of identification that rests upon a set of objective data: a language, a cultural context, a territory, some habits. But also on will, the choice of living together.” So it is not something fixed and unchanging, but it is subject to evolution. Belgium no longer exists as a united country: there are two separate communities that struggle to cohabit inside the fictiveness of a single national State. The final step in the Belgian historical evolution is the independence of Flanders, the nationalist leader seems to confirm, but the intermediate stages are rich in unknowns and no one can tell with much certainty what form they will present themselves in. Elio Di Rupo, for his part, cites Mandela, Gandhi and Mitterrand as his mentors; he states that he first of all feels Belgian, then Walloon and European (and a little bit Italian as well); he defends the reasons behind the survival of the federal Belgian State and the need to reach a “balanced compromise” with the Flemish. But adds that the real problem is that “for the first time in the history of Belgium the largest Flemish party is a nationalist party whose aim is the creation of independent Flanders, inside the EU.” He stresses the urgency of an institutional reform that enhances the autonomy of the regions, guaranteeing at the same time solidarity among all the Belgians thought the federal “sécurité sociale.” He concludes by stating that “if Flanders decide to announce their own independence, Walloons and Brussels people need have no fear of taking hold of the reins of their own destiny”. If these are the “philosophies” that inspire the two leaders at the helm of the respective opposite fronts, today it is hard to say what the solutions to the Belgian riddle are. However, three possible scenarios appear to be taking shape: the first one concerns the restart of the talks. We should bear in mind that the institutional reform calls for a two-thirds majority in order to be passed. The position of the Christian Democrats will be decisive, who have asked Di Rupo to “rewrite” the note: an unacceptable request after one year of talks and a skilful test of a political balancing act. Nevertheless, it is likely that Di Rupo will end up making some adjustments to the hot issues of the Brussels region and the BHV constituency, which meet the demands of the CD&V. Of course, this party would get greater advantages from the involvement in an agreement with the other seven parties that have accepted the note that makes its own the N-VA’s “burnt earth” policy, the only real beneficiary in the case of a definitive failure of the talks. It should be remembered that the institutional reform might not be passed without the consent of the N-VA and the CD&V, as the Flemish Socialists, Liberals and Greens total just thrity-one Flemish seats out of 88, while it is necessary to have the absolute majority in the Dutch linguistic group to adopt the special laws. Thus, the Christian Democrats are keeping the nationalists of the N-VA in play and represent the needle of the scales in the ongoing negotiations. However, their strategy condemns them to be successful, because of the talks failed they would risk being sucked back into the realm of the nationalists, as far becoming almost indistinguishable from them, while their aim is to make use of them, to realise a reform of the State favourable to the Flanders and to marginalise them, in a subsequent moment, presenting themselves as the moderate variety of Flemish regionalism. The second scenario is represented by new elections, which however appear to be highly unlikely, both because everyone fears them owing to the discredit in which the Belgian political class has fallen, and because to call them it is necessary for a majority of MPs to vote for the break-up of the Houses and today in favour of this solution is only the N-VA and the Flemish Far-Right. Nevertheless, the elections are even called for by the Francophone press, in support of the independence of Flanders, which, wanting to uncover De Wever’s bluff, would like to force him to the challenge of an electoral campaign with his cards out on the table, in support of the independence of Flanders, betting on the fact that his proposal would be botched by the Flemish themselves. The third scenario is the relaunching of the Leterme government, which presupposes however the separation of the institutional question from that of the government and in particular the government of the economy. A solution appreciated by Europe, the markets and even the CD&V, which would see confirmed its own strategic role in the match for the country’s fate. Naturally, even in this case the veto of the Flemish nationalists should be overcome, who have always made the institutional agreement a necessary precondition, although not a sufficient one, for any further agreement. As can be seen, Belgium’s survival depends on the fact that the start of its dissolution is, at the moment, more complicated than its inertial conservation. A final, bitter consideration running against the trend in respect to all the mainstream rhetoric of politically correct pro-Europeanism: Flemish nationalism – the idea of being able to survive on a small raft against the high tide of globalisation – presupposes a strong Europe, which surrogates the evaporation of the Belgian federal level absorbing its powers and responsibilities. This means, paradoxically, that only Europe’s implosion, the failure of the Euro and the re-exploding of nationalist atomism could bring the Belgians to rediscovering the political added-value of their small, but not very small, unitary State, in the absence of the common European umbrella. This does not mean, however, that this is a game worth playing.

Furio Ferraresi