Free Republic

Tomas van Houtryve for The New York Times Jean-François Bastin, 61, a Belgian convert to Islam, in his home in Brussels. His party is aggressively pursuing a pro-Muslim agenda. ANTWERP, Belgium - Filip Dewinter, a boyish man in a dark blue suit, bounds up two flights of steep stairs in his political party's 19th-century headquarters building where posters show a Muslim minaret rising menacingly above the Gothic steeple of the city's cathedral. "The radical Muslims are organizing themselves in Europe," he declared. "Other political parties, they are very worried about the Muslim votes and say let's be tolerant, while...

French-speaking enemies call him a "designer fascist", with his air of having just stepped off a plane from San Francisco. Filip Dewinter, the strongman of the Vlaams Blok, the Right-wing anti-immigration party that is poised to do well in tomorrow's Belgian election, is a man who provokes that sort of angry reaction. His Flemish front poses a mortal threat to the Belgian state and the welfare apparatus that keeps the French-speaking regions afloat. Filip Dewinter Each year, the Dutch-speaking majority in the north pay a bigger share of GDP to subsidise their former masters in Wallonia than the west Germans...

Faouzia Hariche (38) is the acting mayor (or “bourgmestre” – burgomaster, from the Dutch burgemeester) of Brussels, the capital of Belgium and of the European Union. Ms Hariche was born in Algeria in 1967. She moved to Belgium when she was seven years old. Though Brussels was historically a Dutch-speaking city and is also considered to be the capital of Flanders, the Dutch-speaking northern half of Belgium, the city was forcibly “frenchified” after the establishment of Belgium in 1830 by French radicals who used French-speaking Wallonia, Belgium’s southern half, as a power base to conquer Flanders. Since 1830 the Dutch...

BRUSSELS (Reuters) - Belgium's history of linguistic bickering between Flemings and Walloons entered a new phase this week when police arrested a Flemish woman for calling her Walloon husband lazy, Belgian media said Thursday. The 48-year-old husband filed a complaint for racism against his spouse for scratching him and calling him "a lazy Walloon, a slave and an inferior creature," De Standaard daily said. The 47-year-old woman will appear before a magistrate later Thursday to face charges of racism, the newspaper said. Dutch-speaking Flemings and French-speaking Walloons are not only linguistically divided but also split socio-economically between a prosperous Flanders...

BRUSSELS - A recent documentary "Questions à la Une" acts as whistleblower against the progression of the Belgian extreme right. French-speaking Belgian TV and radio organisation RTBF recently broadcast a worrisome documentary on the growing popularity of the extreme-right party, the Vlaams Belang, in the Flemish part of the country. A popularity, according to La Libre Belgique, that may bring the Vlaams Belang to victory and which is grossly underestimated in French-speaking Belgium. Christophe Deborsu's documentary is well structured. The investigation starts with an anecdote surrounding a street name and ends with the Vlaams Belang's highly effective campaign strategy. The...

Thousands of Belgians were thrown into a panic by news that the Flemish half of the country had declared independence. A two-hour live television report on the break-up of the nation showed images of ecstatic Flemish nationalists waving flags on the streets and queues of French speakers heading for the “border”. The panic turned to anger after RTBF, the French public broadcaster, admitted 40 minutes into the show that it was a hoax designed to dramatise tensions between Flanders, in the north, and French-speaking Wallonia, in the south. Thousands of viewers called the station during the broadcast, some of them...

A FAKE television news bulletin that Belgium was to split provoked outrage in both halves of the country yesterday."Irresponsible", "questionable" and "regrettable" were among the reactions from Belgium's political mainstream in both French-speaking Wallonia and Dutch-speaking Flanders after a fictional report that Flanders had declared independence. The prime minister Guy Verhofstadt's office described the bulletin as a "misplaced joke". A commission of the Francophone parliament was set to view RTBF's footage, which included a report that King Albert II had fled the country. Only much later during the broadcast did a subtitle reveal that the reports were fictional. The Francophone...

BRUSSELS (Reuters) - Belgium's sharp divide between Flemings and Walloons is likely to widen but fall short of full separation after Sunday's general election given the likely next prime minister's remark about almost half the population. "Apparently the francophones do not have the intellect to learn Dutch," Christian Democrat Yves Leterme told a French newspaper last August, to the consternation of the 40 percent of Belgians whose native language is French. Leterme, premier of Dutch-speaking Flanders, is the frontrunner to succeed liberal Prime Minister Guy Verhofstadt -- also a Fleming -- in an election likely to see Belgium's regions inch...

Belgian Prime Minister Guy Verhofstadt planned to tender his government’s resignation Monday, one day after a general election in which conservatives - led by Christian Democrats - dealt his Socialist-Liberal coalition a stunning defeat. As votes were still being counted Sunday, Verhofstadt, 54, conceded defeat, saying he would leave the limelight after eight years as prime minister. "The voters of our country...have opted for a different majority," he said. That majority faces a difficult agenda that is bound to be dominated by steps to grant further autonomy to Flanders, Belgium’s Dutch-speaking northern half, and Wallonia, its francophone south. Since the...

BRUSSELS, Belgium (AP) - Belgian Prime Minister Guy Verhofstadt's government of Liberals and Socialists took a fierce beating in Sunday's general elections as Christian Democrats translated eight years on the opposition benches into major gains, according to early vote projections. After two four-year terms, the coalition partners were predicted to lose ground across Belgium, a country of 10.5 million where political parties are split into separate Dutch and French-speaking factions. With 30 percent of the vote counted, the VRT television network gave Christian Democrats 32.4 percent of the vote in Dutch-speaking Belgium (up from 25.8 percent in 2003) and Verhofstadt's...

More than ten weeks after the Belgian elections and there is still no government in sight. On 23 August, Mr Yves Leterme, the Christian Democrat who won last June's parliamentary elections and was subsequently charged with forming a new Belgian government, gave his job back. His job was in essence: looking for a workable coalition. Any government in Belgium needs to be a coalition, as no single party is large enough to rule on its own. Mr Leterme was banking on a coalition between two parties from the Dutch speaking north, known as Flanders - and the French speaking south,...

Belgium, it is business as usual. Trains run, the prime minister greets visiting foreign leaders, social security benefits are paid and the country’s famed bureaucracy functions unabated. If everything seems normal, it is – bar one glitch. Belgium has no new government, 101 days after a general election. Since it won independence in 1830, the country has had trouble keeping itself together. Now, concerns are growing that the Franco-phone Walloons of the south and the Dutch-speaking Flemings in the north will finally split. While Belgium bears few visible scars of political impasse, disagreements over state reform have left negotiators unable...

One hundred and three days after their general election, life goes on in Belgium. People go to work, they meet their friends, the beer is world class, the food is good, folks go about life as they always have. And there is still no government. (http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/20841339/) Hopefully the country will provide an inspirational example to the rest of the EU and split under the pressure caused by increasing Flemish unwillingness to pay the parasitic leftists who dominate Wallonia. Of course things might get messy but more likely it will be a velvet divorce... but the really interesting thing for me...

To continue the literary analogy, consider the library at Belgium's Leuven University. Make that two libraries. German armies had burned down Leuven's library in the two world wars, and it was rebuilt after each. But then in 1970, the last time the Flemings and the Walloons got seriously restive, the million-volume collection was carved into two: Odd-numbered books remained on the original campus in the Dutch-speaking part of the country, while even-numbered books went to a new Francophone school built in a field 17 miles to the south. Thirty-seven years later, Belgium's national identity is still so elusive, so fragile...

Brussels (1 December) - The head of Belgium's Flemish Christian Democrats Yves Leterme has announced that he is unable to form a coalition government. King Albert II has accepted his resignation as coalition negotiator. Mr Leterme resigned after the French-speaking Christian Democrats rejected a proposal which would lead to greater regional autonomy. Belgium's political parties have been attempting to form a government since elections were held in June.

BRUSSELS (AFP) - The head of Belgium's Flemish Christian Democrats on Saturday abandoned efforts to form a coalition government, after more than five months of fruitless talks, plunging the country further into crisis. Yves Leterme announced his decision to Belgian King Albert II after the two Dutch-speaking Flemish and two francophone parties involved in talks failed to bridge their differences over devolving more power to the regions. His move, swiftly accepted by the king, deepens the political crisis in the country where some are even talking of a possible split between the richer Flemish majority to the north and the...

Brussels (17 December 2007) - Belgium's outgoing Prime Minister Guy Verhofstadt has agreed to King Albert's request to form an interim government. The king wants the prime minister to address the most urgent issues, including negotiations on important institutional reforms. Belgium is divided into French-speaking Wallonia in the south and Dutch-speaking Flanders in the north. Parliamentary elections were held in Belgium on 10 June, but so far no coalition has been formed because the French-language and Dutch-language parties have been unable to reach agreement. Mr Verhofstadt has suggested forming a government, consisting of a Christian Democratic-Labour bloc representing the Walloon...

European human rights watchdogs are now watching Belgian democracy closely after the move by Flemish local authorities. The Council of Europe has "opened a monitoring procedure on local democracy" fuelling a row between Dutch speaking and francophone Belgians that has threatened the existence of Belgium. Flemish regional authorities have blocked three French-speaking mayors from taking up public office since they were elected in January 2007 in the Brussels suburbs of Linkebeek, Wezembeek-Oppem and Kraainem. Marino Keulen, the Flemish Interior Minister responsible for the ban, remained defiant and announced he will stick by his decision to outlaw the elected mayors....

Belgian Prime Minister offered his government’s resignation to the king Monday, said a source BRUSSELS - Belgian Prime Minister Yves Leterme offered his government's resignation to the king Monday after talks between Flemish and French-speakers on new reforms failed, a source close to the government said. "He will present his government's resignation," the source told AFP under cover of anonymity. "It's an admission of a complete deadlock on community questions, combined with the fact the government will not be able to present an agreement on reforming the state by 15 July," as Leterme had promised, the source said. Leterme only...

BRUSSELS — The move to break up Belgium gathered momentum Sunday as separatists won an emphatic election victory in Flanders, the prosperous Dutch-speaking half of the fiercely divided nation. A stunning electoral success for Bart de Wever’s Flemish nationalist party marks a significant new challenge to the fragile unity of a country where tensions between French and Dutch speakers run deep. Scheduled to take over the rotating presidency of the European Union in less than three weeks, Belgium will now do so with a caretaker administration and facing months of tortuous negotiations to put together a coalition government. “We are...