Firefighting in language of choice sparks row

FOURONS' mayor once described himself as "a pebble in the shoe" of local politics. It is an apt description of the place of this small town of 4,000 in Belgium's political landscape of linguistic division. And, sure enough, a year after it last nearly brought down the government it had already brought down three previously Fourons is back in the news.

This time it's over the right to have fires put out in the citizen's language of choice. I kid you not.

When they drew the now immutable internal borders on Belgium's map, Fourons, with its Francophone majority, was attached against its will to the Flemish speaking province of Limbourg. Ever since, the politicians of the town and the provinces of Limbourg and Francophone Liege have fought like cats and dogs over the linguistic rights of its citizens.

These conflicting rights and obligations, as I understand them, consist in a) the right of Limbourg province to conduct its business in the language of its majority (Dutch), b) the right of the Francophone minority to access to services in their language (French), c) the legal obligation on the mayor of Fourons to be able to speak Flemish, d) the right of the Francophone majority of Fourons to determine that commune business will be conducted in its language of choice (French), e) the right of the minority in Fourons to avail of commune services in its language of choice (Dutch)...

At the time the fire chief explained that as his force was a bunch of volunteers it was a bit unreasonable to ask them to take time off to learn Dutch, and it was agreed to route phone calls from Fourons to the town of Verviers where some Germanophone firemen were thought more able to understand Dutch.

On his fire prevention tours of Fourons, the chief, it was agreed, would be accompanied by a local bilingual official. In the year, he says, no one has complained.

But now Dutch speaking citizens are demanding the right to a pure Dutch fire prevention service and the local commune of Bilzen (Limbourg) has agreed to provide it, promising to notify the chief in Herve whenever one of its men is in Fourons so that he can come along too, if he is so inclined. The bill, Bilzen says, will have to be picked up by Herve.

No way, says Herve.

A linguistic row has also engulfed the country's most celebrated film maker, Jan Bucquoy, whose The Sexual Life of the Belgians won considerable international acclaim in 1994.

His latest production, Camping Cosmos, is in post production and he hopes to have it ready for the Cannes festival in May. Unfortunately the Flemish Community has announced that its subsidy for the film, some £130,000, is to be withdrawn because there is not enough Dutch in the film. Some £300,000 is still being contributed to the £1 million budget by the French Community.

Announcing the decision, the Flemish Culture Minister, Mr Marten van Rompuy, said that it was "shameful" that the film, which he admitted he had not seen, did not have enough Dutch in it. It is purely coincidental, of course, that Bucquoy, also renowned for his iconoclasm, once referred to Mr van Rompuy's brother, another prominent Christian Democrat, as "whore of the week" on the front of the scurrilous newspaper Dol he used to publish.

Bucquoy, one of the few writers and artists in Belgium to express himself equally fluently in both French and Dutch, complains that he spent nearly half of his full budget shooting in Flanders, compares the Minister to Stalin, but says he will not be deflected "I can't be worrying about the rats scurrying down into the hold."

And linguistic rows even engulf the football field there have been recriminations over the selection of 23 year old Paul Okon as winner of the annual player of the year award, the Golden Boot. An Australian who plays for FC Bruges, his success has prompted a string of claims from Francophone journalists that their Flemish counterparts voted against Gilbert Bodard, Standard Liege's goalkeeper, on linguistic rather than football grounds.

Nothing to do with the fact that Bodard's disastrous performance in the Belgium Denmark match put paid to his country's chances in the European Championships?

Of course not. This is Belgium.