Flemish
nationalists break cover on Belgium’s future
The
N-VA revives its separatist charge, ending a year of constitutional
peace.
By LAURENS CERULUS
1/23/16, 7:18 AM CET
Belgium’s largest
party dusted off its plans to create a separate Flemish state,
undermining a promise it made to coalition partners to bury its core
message of splitting the country in two.
Bart De Wever,
leader of the New Flemish Alliance (N-VA), last week tasked his
parliamentary whip with devising a strategy on securing greater
autonomy for Flanders after national elections in 2019, devolving
powers to such an extent that Belgium will eventually cease to exist.
Hendrik Vuye, a professor in constitutional law, will now have to
work out how the party could dismantle Belgium’s notoriously
complex state structures.
The move has
provoked anger among other Belgian parties, who fear a repetition of
the political deadlock of 2010-2011, when it took 541 days to form a
federal government.
It comes at a time
when the government has advocated moving in the opposite direction:
strengthening federal law enforcement powers in the wake of the
terrorist scares that followed the Paris attacks, which raised
awareness of the Flemish nationalists at national and international
level.
But De Wever has
another constituency to please: the N-VA’s core voters, who back a
separate Flemish state and have felt increasingly abandoned as the
party successfully moved into the mainstream by smoothing off the
rough edges.
The party’s plans
revolve around the notion of “confederalism” — which even Vuye
admits is a hard concept to grasp.
The party’s plans
revolve around the notion of “confederalism” — which even Vuye
admits is a hard concept to grasp. “The term has a different
connotation in Belgium than abroad. We see it as an extended form of
federalism,” he told POLITICO. The idea is to have a union of
states in which each part has extensive, independent powers over
internal and external affairs.
“We’re building
on ideas agreed on by the party in 2014, and working to put these
into concrete law proposals,” Veerle Wouters, the party’s
specialist on Belgian finances, who will be working alongside Vuye,
said. “We have to test the water and find public support for this
notion of confederalism.”
Joined together,
pulling apart
Belgium has been
moving in this direction for decades, shifting more and more powers
from state to regional level, turning the country into an ever-looser
union between Dutch-speaking Flanders and French-speaking Wallonia —
with Brussels and the tiny German-speaking community caught in the
middle.
Parties from across
the linguistic divide work out compromises at the federal level on
issues such as justice, foreign affairs and interior affairs, while
regional governments control the likes of education, culture and
integration policy. Many policy areas are, in typically Belgian
fashion, subject to a complex power play between different levels of
government.
The Flemish
nationalists’ pitch is, according to Wouters: “At the federal
level, we will ask the question: What are we still willing to do
together? In principle, all competences would move to the regional
level, but there will be competences of which we’d argue it is
better, or more efficient, to do them together.”
And they won’t shy
away from radical methods, with Vuye suggesting they could even
bypass the Belgian constitution. “Ideally, the Belgian constitution
will be opened up for revision,” he said, “but constitutional law
isn’t just about that text.”
The party’s aim is
to dismantle the federal state so much that Belgium would cease to
exist over time. “[The debate] will revolve around larger issues,”
prominent party member Liesbeth Homans said in a recent interview,
adding that this could cause Belgium “to disappear” by 2025.
The Belgian
government, with Prime Minister Charles Michel (middle) and Interior
Minister Jan Jambon (right of Michel)
With the appointment
of Vuye as state reform czar, De Wever has cast doubt on the future
of the federal government, of which the N-VA is the largest member.
The N-VA want to devolve more powers, but its coalition partners do
not.
The N-VA has been
increasingly in the spotlight over the past year, with Interior
Minister Jan Jambon the point-man in the fight against terrorism and
Finance Minister Johan Van Overtveldt dealing with a shift in
taxation policy.
The party had been
building up to Vuye’s appointment for weeks, putting statements in
the press intended to appease traditional N-VA voters and frighten
political opponents terrified that the country might fall apart.
A Flemish
nationalist figurehead, Jean-Pierre Rondas of the online magazine
Doorbraak.be, wrote in De Standaard: “If you’re a Belgium-lover
you’d better hope that the N-VA is part of a government: You’re
ensured a period of peace on the debate of the reform of the state.”
De Wever’s new
frontman on constitutional affairs has three years to prepare the
battleground on reform of the state, which is expected to play a key
role in the 2019 election campaign.
De Wever’s new
frontman on constitutional affairs has three years to prepare the
battleground on reform of the state, which is expected to play a key
role in the 2019 election campaign.
“The awareness
that a [new] reform of the state is coming is known by all political
parties,” Vuye said. “The question is when, and how big, this
round will be. We have to prepare for that.”
Bad menories
Vuye’s mission
means the end of a year of relative peace on the question of the
country’s future.
For other Belgian
parties, it has uncomfortable echoes of 2010-2011. Then, the N-VA
enjoyed electoral success but the party’s demands to dismantle the
state proved too much for its opponents. The result was political
deadlock.
But De Wever in 2014
reconsidered his demands in exchange for a shot at power when he
struck a deal with Prime Minister Charles Michel to put the push for
state reform in the deep-freeze.
Michel’s reaction
to De Wever’s move last week was to stress that there “would not
be a reform of the state before 2019.”
Elio Di Rupo, a
former prime minister and current president of the French-speaking
Socialists (PS), told public broadcaster RTBF: “The N-VA is holding
its circus. We won’t play along … We don’t want to enter these
N-VA games … The PS will preserve the country’s existence.”
Authors:
Laurens Cerulus
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