Why does belgium want to split

There could be a federal army, he suggested, but not a federal police force. There's certainly a degree of pride in Belgium's national football team, the Red Devils, although several Dutch-speakers we met said they were drawn to supporting the Netherlands team instead.

There are some bridges between the two biggest communities. There's no longer a single national broadcasting service, though separate channels are provided to the different language groups, Dutch, French and German. The general news agendas of Flanders and Wallonia are also entirely different.

When the great French-speaking singer Annie Cordy died recently it was headline news for French-speakers and barely a footnote in Flanders. Joyce Azar points to unifying factors like the national football team and the king, but you do get the feeling she's operating a kind of one-woman air bridge across a widening gap.

More and more the question is real. It might seem extraordinary that in stable, prosperous Western Europe, a real question mark hangs over the future existence of a democratic state. But consider the fate of the opera La Muette de Portici, which fell victim to changing tastes and times and has more or less ended up in the dustbin of history. Who is to say that the country whose revolution it once inspired will not itself one day follow suit?

Belgian king meets far-right leader. Image source, Reuters. After 15 months, Belgium has a new government with as many women as men - but the top two parties are not included. Revolution that started during Brussels opera. While the poll found that Belgians as a whole are mostly against a breakup, there was not exactly a supermajority in that camp. Furthermore, the two parties that won the largest percentages of seats in the Belgian parliament after the elections are both proponents of Flemish separatism: the New Flemish Alliance — the largest party in the nation overall — and their far-right cousin, Vlaams Belang.

The only reason Belgium is not currently governed by separatists is that seven other parties across political, economic, and linguistic spectra were able to form a government instead. To some extent, it makes sense that out of all the regions within Belgium, Flanders appears to be the one most eager to leave.

The Dutch-speaking north is commonly considered to be more economically stable than the Francophone south, as evidenced by its lower unemployment rate and higher economic productivity. A combination of economic confidence and dissatisfaction with growing nationalistic pride is a common thread between separatist movements, and together they are likely responsible for the increasing calls for Flemish independence or at the very least confederation.

That is not to say that running an independent Flanders would be easy. It is not clear that EU membership would be conferred onto its daughter nations in the case of a Belgian breakup. In fact, it is unlikely that newly separated states would automatically be EU members. Unless a deal was reached before separation, both fledgling nations would be left without a clear economic bloc or an established currency, rendering them simultaneously inside and outside of Europe.

The European Union would also have to deal with some fundamental questions after such a split. Brussels could very well become an independent city-state under the auspices of the EU. On a more philosophical note, the implosion of a Belgian state holds larger implications for the European experiment as a whole. After all, if Belgium, a microcosm of the larger EU and its values, cannot hold itself together, what might become of the supranational union?

In the short term, there is next to nothing for King Phillipe to worry about. The current Belgian government, headed by Fleming politician Alexander de Croo, waffles on certain issues, but no major parties — aside from the Flemish separatists — have publicly entertained the possibility of a referendum on separation in recent years. Even the New Flemish Alliance is only in favor of a gradual move towards Flemish independence. At the end of the day, what would an independent Flanders or Wallonia become?

What would they want, and what would they mean? Separatists deface bilingual street names. The language police show up at monthly meetings of the local council. If the proceedings are conducted in French — 13 of the 15 councillors are French-speakers — the session is deemed invalid. At the local primary school, French-speaking kids are downstairs, Dutch-speakers upstairs.

The curriculums are different. There are six such small towns on the fringes of Brussels, all with large francophone majorities, all in Flanders, three of them without mayors who defy the rules, three of them with French-speaking mayors who toe the line.

The problem is the result of urban sprawl. As middle-class professionals grow older, marry and have children, they move out of the city to the suburbs for a bigger house, a garden, a different quality of life. In Brussels, that means French-speaking couples "colonising" Flemish territory and upsetting the language balance in small Dutch-speaking communities. This makes suburban Brussels the battleground, for the capital is the only officially bilingual bit of Belgium.

For electoral purposes it has been connected with 35 Flemish surrounding districts, which means that francophones can vote across the language barrier for French-speaking parties in Brussels. The Flemish living in Wallonia cannot do the same. The constitutional court has ruled this illegal. And the politicians cannot fix it. It is a question of political will, a problem of the repeated failures of Belgium's political elites.

There are 11 parties in Belgium's federal parliament in Brussels. There are another five parliaments and governments in the regions and language communities. There's no future for a country with this construction. In this crowded political scene, there is only Flemish and Walloon politics, no Belgian. Over the decades, the politicians have contrived to create a system where there is no unifying institution, barring the royal palace and King Albert II.

There are no national political parties, no national newspaper, no national TV channel, no common school curriculum or higher education. Like a couple trapped in a loveless marriage, eyeing divorce but unable to agree on the mortgage liabilities, the Flemings and the Walloons may be stuck together because of the cost of splitting up. But the frustrations run deep.