Bye, Bye Belgium?

Last week, I returned from a trip to Europe with 21 law students–an exercise in dispute resolution itself! Seriously, we had a wonderful time and I will, no doubt, be blogging about some of the lessons/speakers/institutions we visited for some time. Today, I wanted to write about our meeting with Professor Alain Verbeke of the University of Leuven who spoke with my students during our visit to Brussels about the ethnic conflict in Belgium. Now you might wonder, as did many of my students before visiting, what could anyone argue about in the land of chocolate, fries, fruity beer and waffles (the four main food groups of any visit)? But the Belgians have built ethnic and linguistic divisions (the French Walloons in the south and the Flemish in the north) into their constitution and, from an outside perspective, this is, not surprisingly, coming back to haunt them. The linguistic minority protections created in the 1930’s have now created ghettos of one language or the other and, except for Brussels itself, inhabitants of Belgium have shockingly little ability or desire to communicate in the other language. What was designed to protect and encourage minorities has, in fact, served to further divide a country. Most shocking to us, there is not even any national media–rather all newspapers and radio are in one language or the other and serve that ethnic population.

So, we had a number of thoughts coming out of this wonderfully informative talk. First, how is it that measures designed historically to hold a country together end up pulling it apart? Hmmm–could this have been avoided? Lessons for other emerging countries that we might learn? Second, how is it that this ethnic conflict with all of its grievances and divisions between the populations has not turned violent while other conflicts do? Is it the relatively high standard of living? The fact of having been a historic battleground for others? Third, wither Belgium today? Does the fact that the EU exists (and is even located in the Belgian capital) make it more likely that even smaller state entities become feasible? These, and others, were the questions we contemplated while drinking yummy beer and eating frites!

One thought on “Bye, Bye Belgium?”

  1. Very interesting blog topic…as you know, I am currently working on my paper that reflects on this very meeting with Professor Verbeke. I am intrigued by his perspective on the Belgium linguistic conflict. Unlike the many scholars that discuss how to improve relations between Flanders and Wallonia, Professor Verbeke believes the conflict will only continue and increase. This conclusion was clear from his article, “Bye, Bye Belgium”, but I still wanted to ask him about it myself. When I questioned Professor Verbeke at our meeting, he replied that yes, he thought that the conflict will continue to progress and relations will continue to deteriorate. Yet he does not believe the country will split. The next question that I now ponder, is how severe will the conflict become? And how exactly, does a country immersed in a worsening conflict, maintain peace and successfully work through their complicated political issues?

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.