Belgium without a government again
The Belgian Prime Minister has tendered his resignation after only a few months heading up a coalition government hastily thrown together under pressure from Federal Europe to prevent delays to the ratification of the EU not-a-Constitution.
Unsurprisingly, the Belgian government has fallen on its arse yet again, this time over a devolution package that would give even more power to Belgium’s regional governments. There is so much power devolved to the Belgian regions that the federal government is barely worth having, hence the indifference of the majority of Belgians when faced with the prospect of months without a functioning government.
There is so much of the apparatus of Federal Europe in Belgium, could the inevitible collapse of the Belgian union see the creation of sovereign EU territory? Flanders is close to independence and there is a growing movement in Wallonia for unification with France. The Brussels region has a very large immigrant population and hence a weak Belgian nationalism. Put to the popular vote, there’s a good possibility the citizens of Brussels would vote to become the Republic of Europe.
Technorati Tags: Federal Europe, Belgium
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by wonkotsane on Tuesday, July 15th, 2008 at 10:24 pm and is filed under General, Federal Europe.
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The Republic of Europe?
Not sure I like the sound of that…
July 15th, 2008 at 10:56 pmWill be funny though when the whole project falls apart and the only remains of the European empire are a small part of Belgium…
July 16th, 2008 at 9:00 amThe goverment fell apart mostly because the countrie is a feckin mess,believe me I live here!All the parties are doubled,one socalist party in flamish and one in french and this goes through the whole country!Huge chunks of taxpayers money has been wasted on having everything in two languages.This will never work until the country has one language or everyone speaks both.And by the way german is another official language just because there is a tiny population of germans in belgium.Maybe they should make arabic another official language because there are at least a million arabic speaking people in this country.
July 23rd, 2008 at 12:48 am