A year without a Belgian Government

It has now been exactly a year since the Belgian Federal elections, but no federal government has yet been formed. In the early days I followed the negotiations with some sense of anticipation, and you can read some of the things I wrote in these posts. I still check up every week or so, but nothing now seems to be happening.

In a nutshell (and excluding the small German speaking community in Wallonia) Belgium is made up of two language communities and three regions: Dutch speaking Flanders, French speaking Wallonia and bi-lingual Brussels. The Flemish N-VA campaigned on the basis of fundamental reform of Belgium, giving more autonomy to the regions. They made a breakthrough in Flanders, becoming the biggest party there. In Wallonia the Parti Socialiste won most seats, wanting to keep Belgium as it is because Wallonia is less prosperous than Flanders and they fear they will lose out in any arrangement that gives the regions more autonomy. I think it's fair to say that Flanders and Wallonia would have gone their separate ways years ago had it not been for Brussels, which neither are willing to let go of.

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What you think of the negotiations and who is to blame for the impasse will depend on which region you're from. Although the N-VA want the eventual independence of Flanders, the other Flemish parties are not prepared to contemplate diluting the N-VA's demands for more autonomy in order to make a deal with the French speaking parties.

There are probably two reasons for this: first, that they want more autonomy too, although maybe not independence; but second, because public opinion in Flanders is not only still very firmly behind the N-VA, but in fact growing. No other party would turn their backs on a party that has far more public support than they do. It would be electoral suicide. These are the results of a poll from last week:

     

     Flemish Nationalists confirm their No 1 status – FlandersNews, 10 June 2011

Support for the N-VA has gone up by over five percentage points at the expense of all other parties except the Greens; and Bart De Wever, the N-VA leader, has a personal popularity rating of 53%. What's his secret? We in Plaid could do with some of it.

     

So what happens next? The BBC seems to think that there won't be new elections because it won't change anything. I'm not so sure. Something has to happen, and new election will provide an excuse for some compromise, even though the faces round the table might be exactly the same. The N-VA are in a position of strength, and so have nothing to fear from a new election. In fact it will probably further strengthen their hand.

Has the year been a waste of time? Well, probably not. The N-VA's stated position has been that they want to see Belgium "very gently disappear". Is there a better way of convincing others that the Federal government is irrelevant than to simply do without one for more than a year? The sky hasn't fallen on their heads. It's now too late to organize an election before summer, but I think there'll be one in autumn.

Belgium Celebrates

Belgium today broke the world record for failing to form a government. A crisis? Well, not really. Belgium hardly needs a federal government because most day-to-day government is handled perfectly well by the devolved regions.

So today has become an excuse for festivities:

Belgians digest "world record" with chips and beer and with no clothes on

Flandersnews, 17 February 2011

Not a pretty sight. To avoid a repeat showing it might be a good idea to get something sorted out before the impasse extends to a year.

It's been hard to keep track of events over the past few months, and I'm not going to try and explain them in this post. Probably the most informative site is here. It sums things up quite well.

Belgium is "clinically dead"

These are the rather dramatic words of Flemish CD&V MP Eric Van Rompuy—brother of the Herman we know rather better—as reported here:

     Belgium coalition talks back to square one

To update the situation from my last report, the technical talks to try and find a way for each region of Belgium to set and retain a proportion of its own income tax have broken down. Early on, it had become fairly clear that the Parti Socialiste and the Green parties would not budge at all on corporate taxation, but they had appeared to accept the principle of reform of personal income tax, which is at present collected by the federal treasury and distributed to the three regions ... in much the same way as currently happens in the UK.

As I noted before, to split income tax half-and-half as the Flemings want is pretty much what the Calman Commission proposed for Scotland (which the ConDem government in Westminster has committed itself to implement) and what our own Holtham Commission has proposed for Wales. So it looks like the PS is digging its heels in on something that hardly seems very radical on this side of the Channel.

It's hard to say whether the impasse is just brinkmanship or the final collapse. The rhetoric still seems to be more designed for the media than for constructive, down-to-business negotiation ... and the mind boggles at quite what sort of "garden gnomes" Bart De Wever has been offered by the PS.

     

The normal mechanism for resolving a situation like this would be to hold fresh elections. But all the signs are that the French-speaking vote would harden around the PS, and that the Dutch-speaking vote would harden round the N-VA. The second largest party in Flanders, the Christian Democrat CD&V, fully supports the same sort of fiscal autonomy as the N-VA ... and that means a new election would be pointless. The issues to be resolved would be exactly the same.

Personally, I think a deal will be done. The only alternative is for Belgium to split, which would mean that Wallonia would be left with 100% fiscal autonomy. So if they are concerned about losing out financially, it is surely better to retain a degree of tax redistribution through a central Belgian treasury rather than lose it completely.

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Yet politics is not always as pragmatic as that: pride, principles and personality also come into the equation and sometimes people anxious to save face end up by cutting off their noses. But that said, if Belgium does split I think separation will turn out to be a very good thing for Wallonia in the longer term. The socialist politicians in Wallonia have been worried about Flanders with 6m people using a different tax regime to unfairly compete with their smaller population of 3.4m, but it is nearly always the case that the smaller country is able to benefit more from any differential with its larger neighbours. Think Luxembourg; think Switzerland ...

... and think what another country with a population of just over 3m people might learn from their example.

Cats in Belgium ... and less important matters

The Guardian has a rather, shall we say, special way of looking at the world ... and of course I value it greatly. But it is extraordinarily Brito-centric. So, while attempts to form a federal government in Belgium are floundering, the Guardian could hardly be expected to make that it's main story about Belgium. No, there's something else that they know the bulk of their readership will find far more important: the impending doom for Belgium's burgeoning cat population.

Belgium plans to neuter most cats as feline population explodes

Almost all Belgian cat owners will be obliged to have their pets
sterilised and registered by 2016

Guardian, 3 September 2010

Still, I learned something I didn't know.

Cat culls have a long history in Belgium. In Ypres, in western Flanders, they've been hurling the animals from the belfry of the 12th-century Cloth Hall for hundreds of years in an annual ritual to ward off the devil.

The massacre continues, now every three years. But nowadays the cats are fluffy, velveteen toys.

Bagpuss is horrified. He's wondering whether it might be better to throw politicians from the belfry instead.

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However, for those whose who might be interested in what's happening in Belgian politics, the answer is that the talks to form a federal government have now collapsed. The situation last weekend has developed in these ways. Di Rupo offered to split the extra finance he wanted for Brussels into two parts: €250m a year now, set alongside splitting Brussels Halle-Vilvoorde; and €250m a year as a fixed part of any future deal on a new funding formula for the three regions. De Wever said he would only accept immediate additional funding for Brussels if it was for a maximum of two years, with no fixed sum pre-allocated to Brussels in whatever new deal was agreed. So Di Rupo went back to the king to tender his resignation as preformateur for a second time.

A selection of reports is here.

What happens next? My guess is that things will cool down for a while, so as to see what less formal, unofficial talks might yield. However, it isn't quite fair to understand this as only a Flanders vs Wallonia issue, it is also a matter of simple right vs left politics. Both the big parties in Flanders are centre-right, so the financial reform they want is as much about overall deficit and debt reduction (and the balance to be struck between reducing services or increasing taxes to pay for it, and how quickly) as it is about sharing spending between the three regions.

But the choices are stark. Either a compromise deal is done and a federal government formed or, if no deal can be done, Flanders and Wallonia will have to separate. But there's no rush, it can wait another month or so.