BELGIUM:Belgium could be on the verge of splitting up, writes Honor Mahonyin Brussels, following the collapse of fractious coalition talks and the growth in power of Flemish separatists
A political crisis in Belgium has once again sparked talk of the country's eventual break- up after politicians last week abandoned negotiations to form a new government.
Yves Leterme, the Flemish prime minister-designate, on Thursday resigned his mandate to lead coalition talks after failing to break a deadlock on powersharing between the rival Dutch and French speaking regions.
The move leaves the country without a national government since elections on June 10th with it now up to King Albert to decide on new mediators.
It is also the latest twist in a political saga that has gripped Belgium since it became clear that Flemish speaking separatists made strong gains among the electorate.
Earlier this month the French-language newspaper Le Soir raised the alarm. It said the result of the election had "put the existence of the state in danger". The tension is centred around devolution. The Flemish want more powers given to the regions. The Walloons believe this is simply a guise to break up the country which is already split into three distinct regions - the richer northern Flanders, where Dutch is spoken, Wallonia, the poorer Francophone south, and Brussels, the capital, which is officially bilingual.
Government-forming talks are often a marathon in Belgium - it once took almost 150 days - but these started particularly badly with Mr Leterme, a centre-right politician, pandering to separatist Flemings. He once called Belgium an "accident of history" and suggested that French speakers were too "intellectually backward" to learn Dutch.
The current political stalemate has once again raised questions about what it means to be Belgian, with Flanders (with 60 per cent of the population) and Wallonia said to have as little in common as beer, frites and their king.
Certainly ordinary Belgians agree that the Flemings are different to their French-speaking cousins.
"They are more German, we are more Latin," says Olivier Haway (35), a banker from Brussels, referring to "two different cultures". But this two-culture system - extending to different political parties, newspapers, television and even celebrities - means that villages that are close to each other but lie on either side of the language border have nothing to do with each other.
Road signs are a good indication of the strength of the linguistic divide. They are strictly monolingual.
Leaving Brussels in the direction of Lille or Mons can be disconcerting for an unprepared tourist. The signs quickly disappear to be replaced by 'Rijsel' or 'Bergen' (Lille and Mons respectively) because the road goes through Flanders.
Politically, things are as complicated. In this small country of just over 10 million people there are six separate parliaments, including a federal one and one for the tiny German-speaking community.
Adding extra spice to the debate is the fact that Brussels - mainly French-speaking but situated in Flanders - is host to the EU's main institutions.
All this makes for a fascinating case study for political scientists. Prof Bart Maddens from the Catholic University of Leuven says that Belgian academics are debating whether a technical solution, such as making national, rather than regional, political constituencies, would help bridge the divide. In his opinion however, the split is already too deep.
In the long run, Belgium as a state "is gradually falling apart", he says.
And indeed there appears to be a growing sense of Flemish national identity. A recent poll for newspaper Het Nieuwsblad showed that almost 40 per cent of Flemings want a separate Flanders, contrasting with 12 per cent of Walloons who want independence.
But Belgium still does inspire patriotism. Sven Busselot (26), an IT technician and Fleming from Leuven says: "We [ he and his friends] like being Belgian. The Flanders identity is not enough. "We need the Walloons as much as they need us."