BRUSSELS — Belgium’s 6.5 million Dutch- and 4 million French-speakers are locked in an unhappy, quarrelsome union, and voters in a general election tonight might well favor the prospect of a political divorce down the road.
A mainstream Flemish party, which is expected to do well, is invoking the concept of irreconcilable differences to seek a separation and, in time, take the country’s Dutch-speaking Flanders region into the European Union as a separate country.
This is a nightmare scenario for the poorer Wallonia, Belgium’s Francophone south, which greatly depends on Flemish funds.
Early elections were called after Premier Yves Leterme’s five-party coalition fell apart April 26 in a dispute over a bilingual voting district.
That issue has pushed the New Flemish Alliance — which was a tiny, centrist party only a few years ago — into a pole position: It is forecast to win a quarter of the vote in Flanders.
Its leader — and perhaps Belgium’s next premier — Bart de Wever, 39, wants an orderly breakup of Belgium by shifting the national government’s last remaining powers, notably justice, health and social security, to Flanders and Wallonia. That would complete 30 years of ever greater self-rule for the two regions.
The New Flemish Alliance wants Flanders to join the EU, but there are no comparable separatist sentiments in Wallonia. Finance Minister Didier Reynders, a Francophone Liberal, says the question facing Belgians is: “Do we still want to live together?”
“We did a study of 10,000 people and found 84 percent want the country reformed, but not broken apart,” said Marianne Thyssen, a Dutch-speaking Christian Democrat.
Yet in Belgium just about everything — from political parties to broadcasters to boy scouts and voting ballots — already comes in Dutch- and French-speaking versions. Even charities such as the Red Cross and Amnesty International have separate chapters.
Pierre Verjans, a University of Liege political scientist, said he feels “a sense of mourning going on. French- speakers now fear a Belgium without Dutch-speakers.”
