I admit having not kept up that closely with this. Will it be good, bad or make no difference in the larger scheme of things?
I like Belgium and always enjoyed visiting there (the Ardennes) but man, that country is really screwed up.
Didn’t Biden just say recently that the capital of the world is Belgium? Does this mean there will be 2 capitals now? (sarc)
There’s no such thing as a Belgian anyway - the Belgicae were a barbarian tribe in Caesar’s day. Now there are Flemings and Waloons, and apparently they hate each other.
The only thing that kept Belgum or its antecedents, Spanish then Austrian Netherlands, was the Catholic faith. Belgium was incorporated into the Netherlands at the Congress of Vienna but the Dutch were a bit too intolerant of Catholicism so Belgium broke away. With Europe post-Christian there is nothing to serve as a glue to keep Belgium together.
Darn so Obammy was right about a two-state solution. He just got the location and parties involved very wrong.
If I remember correctly, the Dutch speaking side pays the taxes and the French side gets all the money.
Let the dismantling of the EU begin!
Goooood.
Things getting pretty boring,
Not enough crap going on already.
Scorecards,
Get ya scorecards.
See who’s gonna whoop who’s ass.
Scorecards.
...assuming Belgium can afford to cut itself in half. Splitting up welfare states probably costs a pretty penny, especially if one of the halves would be deprived of a tax base to keep it afloat.
Introduce language and ethnic differences and you have a recipe for disaster.
Belgium is an artificial state created by European diplomats (was it after the Peace of Westphalia?). There’s no reason for Flanders to have to keep having to support the Walloons.
Who gets custody of the chocolates?
The only reason Belgium was created in the first place was as a Catholic buffer zone between the predominantly protestant northern countries and southern Europe. Now that most of Belgium is secular (making “Catholic” unity a negligible force), and the Flems grow tired of supporting their Walloon countrymen in the south, we should not be surprised at the recent elections.
Harrumph.
Maybe this is a good thing. After the defeat of Napolen, the Treaty of Vienna stole over 1/3 of Luxembourg and put it into Belgium in order to get more French-speaking people into the new country. Those folks never were given a plebecite, just an edict that they were no longer Luxembourgers, but Belgians.
The first immigrants from that part of Belgium listed themselves as Luxembourgers - it continued as such until about 1870 when they began to list themselves as Belgians.
I think Luxembourg ought to demand the return of it’s territory and its citizens if Belgium breaks up.
This is FANTASTIC result. The Flemish northerners are pro-free market, pro-American, and anti-Muslim. Freed from supporting a French south welfare state, an independent Dutch north would immediately be among the most fiscally sound states in the EU. And they are wonderful people too.