Belgian Affairs

Brussels: a sad, sad planet

For those who live in Brussels, the city can turn out to be a sad sad planet. Last week a Kalashnikov-style hold up on an exchange office and the decision of a school to move because its students were mugged too often, heated the debate about insecurity in the capital.

Very soon, a very Belgian thing occurred. While the Dutch speaking (Flemish) press discussed the issue very elaborately and - in my opinion - exaggerated by calling certain streets in Brussels a no-go-zone, there hardly was any debate in the French speaking press. The French speaking socialist mayor of Brussels City even called the hold up - a policeman was shot down with a Kalashnikov - a 'fait divers'.

In my opinion, the insecurity in Brussels is only one part of the story. In fact, there are three parts in the story of the failing government in the Belgian capital:

1. Education: in Brussels one out of four students never finishes high school (in Belgium it is called 'secundair onderwijs'. When you finish it at 18 years old, you start working or you go to university.)

2. Work: in Brussels one out of five is unemployed. There is a strong correlation with the previous mentioned figure. Two of three unemployed in Brussels only finished the school-grades you are supposed to get when you're 16, or has a foreign education that is not formally recognized in Belgium.

3. Crime: crime figures of the federal police show that Brussels is doing worse than the rest of the country, but only when it comes to theft. If one takes a look at figures for violence, rape, murder, etc, they are as high in Brussels as in Belgium. The same goes for vandalism.

So yes, there is an insecurity problem in Brussels. But the education problem is as urgent, as is the unemployment issue.

One of the underlying issues is migration. As a capital, Brussels attracts a lot of immigrants. They often lack the education and language skills for the higher level jobs a European capital has to offer.

A second issue is the horrible institutional framework in Brussels. In fact, there are five levels of government.

Level 1. The laws of the European Union.

Level 2. Federal law on justice, police, home affairs, ...

Level 3a. The government of the Brussels region: economy, international trade, local authorities, urban planning, ... Important to notice is that the Dutch speaking politicians have a protected minority in the regional parliament and the regional government of Brussels.

Level 3b. The French speaking community in Brussels and the Dutch speaking community in Brussels: both of them have authority on education policy in schools and welfare policy in hospitals, officially organizing things in Dutch or French.

Level 3c. The gathered commission of the French speaking community and the Dutch speaking community in Brussels. This commission has authority on bi-lingual cultural organizations. (We don't have many of them, but a few though.)

Level 4. The 'provincial' level. Brussels doesn't belong to a province, but has sort of a provincial governor nonetheless. There are signals that this function - which is not needed - will be abolished.

Level 5. The 19 Brussels communities. The difficult - and again very Belgian thing - is that the 19 mayors are French speaking. So there is some French speaking pressure to delegate power from the regional government (that has a Dutch speaking protected minority in it) to the Brussels communities, where no such protection exists.

How does Brussels cope with its key problem of uneducated immigrants on the job market and its crime? This way. As Pascal Smet, a former Brussels socialist minister said: In Brussels everyone is empowered to do something, but no one really is ever responsible. A sad, sad planet, it sometimes is.

Bart Haeck

This uncanny quiet month of January

It has been some time since we published a new blog post on Belgian politics, but then again, for Belgian politics it has been a very quiet month of January. It seems prime minister Yves Leterme is trying to do the very same trick his predecessor Herman Van Rompuy did: getting popular by remaining silent in turbulent times. In the political language of the day, this is called 'stability'.

In the real economy however, things are moving fast. If 2008 was the year of the financial crisis, and 2009 was the year of the economic crisis, 2010 has started as the year of the social crisis. In the first month of the year Belgium has seen social conflicts in companies as AB Inbev, DHL, HP, Gates, Janssen Pharmaceutica, ArcelorMittal, Volvo Trucks and Picanol. Most of the attention went to the Opel-plant in Antwerp, which mother company General Motors is closing down.

As a result, Flemish unemployment is quickly going up to the highest level in four years. The good news is that with an unemployment rate of 7.5% Flanders is still quite well off. The bad news is that Wallonia, with an unemployment rate that is twice as high, is not well off. And what to say about Brussels, that crossed the 21% last month.

 (Some explanation with the graph: NWWZ means 'niet werkende werkzoekenden, or people not working but looking for a job). 'Vlaams Gewest' means 'Flemish region'. 'absolute aantallen', simply means 'absolute figures'.

 

There has been some reaction. At the end of January, thousands of people - 35,000 according to the unions, 26,800 according to the police - joined a manifestation in a rainy Brussels to ask for jobs and respect. The federations of companies reacted with a petition, signed by 20,000 people, to ask 'space' and respect for business.

Politicians have responded by organizing meetings. In the Flemish Region, where Opel Antwerp is located, minister-president Kris Peeters has organized an industrial summit. In the federal government, unions and business federations are sitting back around the table. They now have one month to agree on an agenda.

The big question is how much longer the federal government can afford this situation. The slow turning of the federal government is making especially the younger generation nervous. Young politicians and MP's of Open VLD, sp.a and Groen! (liberals, socialists and greens) have started a petition and a Facebook-group 'the clock is ticking' to voice their protest. Their message: do something, and do it quick. It may hurt, but doing nothing wil only increase the pain in the end.

Bart Haeck

 

 

 

Things to do in (the first half of) 2010

What will Belgian politics be like in 2010? Well, two well intertwined issues are likely to dominate: state reform and the hole in the budget.

It is expected Belgium will have a budget deficit of 5.1% of GDP in 2010. The European Commission says that the deficit should shrink to 3% of GDP in 2012. This means that the coming months, the Belgian federal government of Yves Leterme has to rewrite the budget planning for the coming years.

The nasty thing is that the federal government is almost out of money and will need to ask the regional governments for some more. Flanders only wants to do this if it gets more power in return, which is the so called Maddens-strategy. In other words: if you want to fix the budget, you'll have to fix a state reform.

And then there is that other nasty thing: the electoral district Brussels-Halle-Vilvoorde. The federal government of Yves Leterme has to find a solution if it doesn't want to jeopardize the organization of the federal elections in 2011. Former prime minister Jean-Luc Dehaene has gotten the task to seek for a way out, but no progress has been seen so far.

And even if a solution for BHV is found, it probably will put the Flemish government of Kris Peeters under a lot of strain. One of the parties in that regional government is the N-VA, a die-hard Flemish nationalist party which can not live with the slightest compensation for the French speaking community when it comes to BHV. So if CD&V in the federal government accepts a compensation, how will that same CD&V in the Flemish government keep the trust of its coalition partner N-VA?

A last thing to watch in 2010 is the bridge in Antwerp that was annulated in a referendum. The plans for the bridge may be gone, but the mobility problem in Antwerp isn't. The Flemish government has to find a solution in the coming months, wich will not be easy given the history of the conflict.

And oh yes, from the first of July till the 31st of December, Belgium takes over as EU-president. Expect politicians to find solutions for the above mentioned problems in the first half of the year, when the spotlights of the world don't shine so bright yet on them.

Bart Haeck

Two sad stories about Brussels, the unloved city

http://www.flickr.com/photos/megzimbeck/ / CC BY 2.0

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Unpleasant news for the Belgian and European capital Brussels: a famous landmark brasserie/restaurant today closes its doors and the local river, the Zenne, got contaminated after water purification was deliberately stopped. Both events are not exactly world shocking but illustrate the problematic position of Brussels: it's a city which is not allowed to be a city, keeping an unhappy couple (the French and Flemish communities) together.

The brasserie/restaurant we talk about here is De Ultieme Hallucinatie.

This family mansion was built in 1850 in neo classical style. In 1904 the owner Cohn-Donnay, instructed Paul Hamesse  (architect 1877 - 1956) to restructure and redecorate his home to a contemporary geometrical Art Nouveau style. The furniture consists mainly of train benches, designed by Henry Vandevelde for the Belgian Railways in 1930.

Deals which changed Belgian media and political history were discussed in this venerable institution. The Rolling Stones, Gari Kasparov and Anatoli Karpov once visited the place.

The Flemish owners, Fred Dericks en Kriz Haepers, turned the historical building into a lively and stylish hang-out, especially for the Brussels' Flemish community. Fred Dericks passed away and Kriz Haepers prefers not to continue the hard work of running De Ultieme Hallucinatie. The brasserie/restaurant came on the market for three million euro but potential investors said the place was too big for normal exploitation and too small for big parties.

Observers fear that Brussels will see the decay or destruction of yet another historical art nouveau building. Publicist Geert van Istendael is one of those who cannot understand why the Flemish authorities don't buy the place to turn it into a Flemish House.

The small river the Zenne is considerably less glamorous compared to De Ultieme Hallucinatie.  In the center of Brussels, the Zenne was completely covered up. The Zenne was notorious for being one of Belgium's worst polluted rivers, since all effluents from the Brussels Capital Region were versed in it without treatment.

In March 2007, the completion of new sewage treatment plants, began to remediate this problem. However, last week things went very wrong.

The Brussels North water purification station was shut down. This has resulted in the waste water flushed by 1.1 million citizens of Brussels flowing untreated into the Zenne. The station operator Aquiris had simply ceased treating the water. The company had already halted pumping operations on the river's right bank on 25 November.

The Brussels Water Board and the Brussels Region were immediately informed of that, the water station operator asserts. Almost three weeks passed since the time of the first discharge of untreated water and the reaction of the authorities.

There is a disagreement between the Brussels Region and the Aquiris French parent company, Veolia, on who is to pay for an additional sand filter. The contaminated water will soon reach Antwerp in the Dutch speaking part of the country - contamination does not respect political or language borders. 

In my opinion both stories illustrate once again how undervalued as an asset Brussels is in Belgium. Brussels is a motherless child: It could use more money. It could use more attention from the public opinion in Flanders. Instead of fearing that the capital would expand, they could embrace the most international city on its territory.

Instead public opinion in Flanders avoids the capital, where Dutch speakers are a minority. Those who work in the capital hurry away after work. The few (mostly young people) who'd like to live in the city cannot afford it, the presence of international institutions making it an cosmopolitan but also a relatively expensive place to buy property (and Belgians absolutely want to own property, not rent). 

The French speaking political parties are not doing a great job governing the city. There are tensions between the Walloon region and the capital. The city itself consists out of 19 municipalities. This of often presented as a smart way to govern a city of more than one million inhabitants in a decentralized way.The reality is that it allows local politicians to run their own fiefdoms. 

The only place in Belgium which could be a major international city and which should have the ambition to become another European metropolis such as London or Paris is governed as a small provincial town and its needs are ignored or mistrusted by the two big language communities. 

This, of course, is catastrophic. A country lacking an international metropolis often condemns itself to mediocrity. There is a reason why the young, the talented, the dreamers and the visionaries flock to London, Paris or New York. One cannot create a metropolis by decree (except in China maybe), so some regions simply have the bad luck to stay suburban, dull places. Belgium is lucky enough to have Brussels, the capital of Europe, a cosmopolitan city with a lot of charm. We only should really decide to grasp that opportunity and to enhance it instead of ignoring it.

Roland Legrand

We're all Belgians now

Europe will be the Belgian way or it will not be, the one liner goes. It means that Belgian isn't a state, but a compromise seeking coalition of two states, even a permanent diplomatic meeting. It means that the EU isn't a superstate, but a coalition of many states. Even the Economist says this week 'we're all Belgians now.'

Anyway, in less than two weeks Belgium has captured two big posts in the EU. Former prime minister Herman Van Rompuy became the first president of the EU. And now former minister of foreign affairs Karel De Gucht gets the powerful post of trade commissioner in the European Commission. The EU is a bit more Belgian now than it was last month.

Bart Haeck

Here we go again

Here we go again. This Wednesday, Yves Leterme will be sworn in as the 67th prime minister of Belgium. But not only Yves Leterme is back, in the first place Brussels-Halle-Vilvoorde is back where it once was: in the middle of the political attention.

How did this happen? Well, first of all Herman Van Rompuy became the first president of the EU, leaving his seat as prime minister vacant. His party, CD&V, decided that Yves Leterme should make his comeback. Despite his resignation after the Fortisgate-scandal, he is still the strong man of the party and still has a solid electoral basis in his district, the province West-Vlaanderen.

But with Leterme the demons of the political crisis of 2007 came back. Herman Van Rompuy had finished three out of five of his 'wharfs': the budget, an energy deal with GDF Suez and an agreement on migration policy. The two other wharfs were the biggest: BHV and the state reform.

BHV is a very tricky one, and for those trying to understand Belgian politics it's essential to understand its importance and complexity. It is an issue of territory and language, cultural identity. And because so many promises have been made, it has become an issue of political credibility too. Alas the promises rule each other out. Something gotta give, one day.

A small reminder of the historical context: In the seventies and eighties, Belgium tried to solve its language problems by dividing the country in four areas with a different official language regime: Flanders (Dutch), Wallonia (French), Brussels (Dutch and French) and the small German community near the German border (German).

The whole country - communities, jurisdictions, electoral districts, ... - is divided along these language frontiers. There is one exception: the electoral district (and justice district) Brussels Halle Vilvoorde. For that reason the constitutional court declared the electoral district not in line with the constitution.

In the French speaking part of the country, things are seen in a less legal but more emotional way. Splitting up the electoral district will lead to the break up of the whole country, it is feared. As Flanders is the richer part of Belgium, this would leave Wallonia impoverished.

In this context politicians on both sides of the language borders have done big promises. Yves Leterme promised his Flemish voters to solve the issue in 'five minutes of political courage', a phrase that still is haunting him. And the French speaking politicians only want to split the district if the territory of Brussels can be expanded, which is unacceptable for Flemings. They think Brussels is already to dominant French speaking and often feel it's not their capital but almost a foreign city. What's more, changing the language frontiers - which are fixed in the constitution - is probably more difficult than splitting up an electoral district.

So that's why here we go again. The name of Yves Leterme as the new prime minister was barely whispered last week, or the French speaking politicians started getting nervous again. As a consequence, CD&V had to take everything it got to prepare the comeback of Leterme.

First of all, former prime minister Wilfried Martens started negotiating with the government parties - especially the French speaking ones. The subject of the talks was a bit surreal: the way in wich BHV will be discussed. This shows how the top politicians of the country do not trust each other. The big question was if Yves Leterme could preside the negotiations on BHV or not. If he did, he would make it more difficult maybe, given his track record and his credibility problem due to his 'five minutes of political courage'. But if he didn't, some people feared a replay of the Egmontpact in 1978: the presidents of the political parties negotiated the agreement, but the prime minister, Leo Tindemans, refused to back it, which made him extremely popular with Flemish voters but made a compromise even more difficult.

Former prime minister Martens found a solution in sending another political veteran in the field: former prime minister Jean-Luc Dehaene. He will start searching a solution for BHV. In this way, the issue is evacuated from the government, so Yves Leterme can make his comeback. Politics in Belgium is never a walk in the park.

Bart Haeck

Till debt do us part

Last week Paul Krugman, who won the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics in 2008, was in Belgium and was interviewed in De Tijd. Asked about a very Belgian thing - public debt - he wasn't too worried, he said. Krugman called it an 'issue', but not a killing 'issue'.

In fact, the Belgian case seemed a source of some mild optimism. Belgium has showed, Krugman argued, that an advanced country can have a public debt of 120 percent of GDP without provoking a financial crisis. The only major problem a country can suffer is that financial markets no longer believe it will pay back its government bonds. Throughout the years, Belgium has showed that it takes a very high level of debt in order to provoke such a fundamental distrust.

That same week, Krugman used the debt track record of Belgium in his blog to show that public debt and deficits are not the main problems for the US, it is the faltering economy. If Belgium can do it, the US certainly can, seems the idea. An unexpected variation on 'Yes, we can'.

Bart Haeck

Who is Herman Van Rompuy?

Who is Herman Van Rompuy, the Belgian prime minister who may very well become the first president of the EU? Well, he's a quiet intelligent man, who loves books, understands economy and writes Japanse poetry. A religious family man also, who bought a Vespa when he was in his fifties (he first wanted a BMW-bike, but his wife downplayed his ambition) and is told to know surprisingly much about football. A man who looks rather stern, but can be very witty.

As a politician he is atypical. He never had a local career in politics. Instead he built his political fortune on economics. Van Rompuy is the son of an Economics professor, is a trained economist himself and worked in the early seventies three years for the Belgian National Bank.

In the eighties he was the head of Cepess, the think-tank of the christian-democrats. This wasn't a purely academic thing, as he revolted against the federal government of prime minister Wilfried Martens (also christian-democrat). Each year Van Rompuy's Cepess made a sharp analysis why the federal policy on budget and economy wasn't what the country needed. As a result he was not exactly on speaking terms with Wilfried Martens, a situation that lasted 25 years and only got back to normal a few years ago.

Van Rompuy knows how Belgian politics work. He was a coalition negotiator for most of the governments of Wilfried Martens and Jean-Luc Dehaene. He was chairman of CVP from 1988 till 1993, a time when the party delivered the prime minister. He was minister of Budget from 1993 until 1999.

Van Rompuy, who also has a degree in philosophy, was remarkably silent after 1999, when Guy Verhofstadt (Open VLD) drove the christian-democrats out of power. For eight years he barely spoke in parliament. It seen as an example of his ability to live detached and put things in perspective, his own position included.

People saw him as a conservative religious christian-democrat at that time - an image that had been shaped during the debates about a more liberal abortion legislation. But some years later he started a website on which he made comments on politics, wrote his haiku's and posted quotations about politics and life in general.

He also was in the jury of a popular human intrest TV show, and suddenly Flanders discovered that Van Rompuy is a very witty man.

Things took a twist in 2007, when Yves Leterme tried to form a government but failed. Van Rompuy operated as a discrete bridge builder and put Leterme back on track. He was rewarded and became president of the lower house in parliament (De Kamer - La Chambre). It seemed a perfect cast. The philosopher in Van Rompuy likes to stand way above the political bickering.

So perfect, that when Yves Leterme resigned from his post as prime minister, Van Rompuy didn't want to succeed him. It took one or two weeks for the top politicians of CD&V to convince him to do it. But in the end, he did it. After that, Yves Leterme hoped for a quick come back as prime minister, but Van Rompuy didn't let him. On his website he once posted a suspiciously appropriate quotation of Emile Loubet, president of France in 1900 : 'I did't come here for my pleasure, and I will not leave for the pleasure of others.'

Since then, Van Rompuy governs the country in his own style. He doesn't say much, which has created - to his own surprise, he once admitted- an atmosphere of stability. He is seen as a prime minister without 'sturm und drang', but who waits for the right moment, analyzes the situation perfectly and then goes for a realistic solution. Some people think that's a bit cynic or the result of a lack of ambition, others say it's the most intelligent way to do something in a difficult country as Belgium. 

It may be the best way to preside a debate between 27 heads of states and government leaders. It takes pragmatism and a low profile strategy to mend big political egos. 'I'm not interested in passion', Van Rompuy said last summer in an interview in De Tijd', 'I'm interested in results.'

Bart Haeck

Herman Van Rompuy for president?

He is very low profile, is a christian-democrat and lives in the old heart of Europe. And apparently that's all it takes to be a candidate. The question of the week is: will Belgian prime minister Herman Van Rompuy (CD&V) become the first president of the European Union?

Although the international press doesn't pay much attention to it, speculation in the Belgian press is running wild.

It seems that the Belgian political world is happy for mister Van Rompuy that he is a candidate, but worries about who will replace him at the head of government. It seems that former prime minister Yves Leterme (CD&V) is first in line, but he has a bad track record when it comes to negotiating a state reform. Unfortunately, that issue is on top of the to-do-list of the federal government for 2010 and 2011. Some politicians are already saying that if Van Rompuy leaves, the government should call elections.

It's all hypothetical for now. But one thing seems sure: Belgian politics recently calmed down. Not much is needed to disturb it.

Bart Haeck

Do you have to let it linger?

'Do you have to let it linger?', the Cranberries sang in 1993 and that's exactly what one could think about the ongoing political soap opera of the electoral district Brussels-Halle-Vilvoorde (BHV). Last week, the regional parliament of the German speaking community in Belgium has called a new 'belangenconflict' (conflict of interests), a procedure that prevents a federal vote on the issue.

'What's the point?', one could ask. A few words.

First of all, Belgium is built on a very volatile equilibrium between language communities. It was difficult to reach the equilibrium, and every detail that changes it has the potential of disturbing it thoroughly. That's why, as we explained in a previous post, splitting the electoral district Brussels-Halle-Vilvoorde is such a touchy thing to do.

In short, the Flemings consider it as an aberration that an electoral district is not organized along the constitutional imposed language frontiers of the country. The French speaking part of the country sees splitting up the electoral district as a first step to an independent Flemish state. It's difficult to find a compromise between these two opinions.

But the thing is that the very essence of Belgian politics is compromise. This is not a fluffy intellectual consideration, it is written in the constitution. If the Dutch speaking members of parliament (who are in the majority) want to vote legislation that is considered harmful by the French speaking part of the country, the French speaking members op federal parliament can stop the vote for a while. This is called the alarm bell procedure. It is meant to create time to find a compromise.

A variation on this procedure is the 'belangenconflict', a rather ill chosen word that literally means 'conflict of interests'. If e.g. a regional parliament is considering adopting legislation that is considered harmful by another parliament of the country, the latter can suspend the voting procedure. Since this alarm bell procedure and belangenconflict were written in the constitution, politicians talk about the 'grendelgrondwet', or the 'bolt and lock constitution'.

This explains why in may 2008 the French speaking politicians were so shocked when the Flemish MP's  in the commission of home affairs of the federal parliament started voting on the splitting up of BHV. It was a culture shock for a political system that has avoiding conflict in its DNA.

After that vote, the legislation still had to be passed in the plenum session of the federal parliament. This has still not happened yet because the conflict avoiding procedures are doing their work. First the parliament of the French speaking community called a 'belangenconflict'. Then the parliaments of the Walloon region and of the French speaking community in Brussels did the same. The time for negotiating had ended, but now the German speaking minority has called a new belangenconflict.

This is becoming surrealist, as the German speaking minority (near the German border) doesn't have anything to do with an electoral district in and near Brussels. The thing is that the tiny German speaking minority is situated on the territory of the regional government of Wallonia and wants more devolutionary power to make its own policy on things as urbanization or cultural heritage. It's the Walloon region that has to grant them. So it did the French speaking politicians of the Walloon region a favor, expecting one in return.

As a result Belgium has (roughly counted) another 100 days to find a solution. Will it find it? It's very unlikely, as the Flemish politicians consider every negotiable solution not done. Why should you do that if the constitutional court has annulled the part of the law that created the electoral district BHV?

Will federal parliament vote within 100 days, Flemings against French speaking MP's? Well, maybe, but everything will be done to prevent it. Maybe even the alarm bell procedure will be used. In the second half year of 2010 Belgium presides the EU. It doesn't want a new crisis in the run-up to it. Brussels-Halle-Vilvoorde? The government will do its best to let it linger.

Bart Haeck