Vlaamse vrienden,
Bij wijze van "uitnodiging tot debat" postte ik mijn visie op de overwegend franstalige blog www.orange-bleue.info op onze jongste staatshervorming. Eens zien wat dat wordt.
Beste lezer, reageren kan hieronder. Dat mag in beide talen, ik ben ze machtig.
U ook?
Hasta La Republica Flamenca!
Smithson.
Gepost op Orange-Bleu:
BeantwoordenVerwijderenThis scheme will not work.
What's more, you would give up the peripheral communities (randgemeenten) in exchange for Brussels that isn't viable on itself since it has no room, both geographically and as to quality of workforce, for economical expansion or even break even. Brussels is basically bankrupt with its growing majority of immigrants that fail to integrate and with subclasses of elderly and unemployed.
It would be wrong to pour good Flemish money into a losing asset. It's feeding hay to a dead horse. Let Brussels rot in its carcan, where there is no space for an airport let alone a Ring.
The guaranteed representation of the Flemish in Brussels is undemocratic. Brussels is a bilingual French-Arab city. The guaranteed representation is a price too high for the imposed parity on the federal level, where the Flemish can't cash in on their majority in Belgium. Only the (too) numerous Flemish "deputés" will deplore it.
What's more, Flanders and Wallonia are two different countries as to language, culture and mindset. Flanders is an international and open region, that accounts for the vast majority of the Belgian export. French-speaking don't adapt easily in a global business environment because of their language handicap. The gap is widening yearly: French-speaking never to bothered to learn Dutch, and now the the Flemish generation that spoke French quite well is bound to extinct. Flemish youth just doesn't know how to speak French. But it knows English better than its French-speaking counterpart.
The endless "communautarian" compromises are unworkable in the artificial Belgian construct. They cost too much money (paid for by Flanders) and grossly unproductive time. They drain the energy from Flanders in an ever tougher global competition. As one famous great Brussels statesman once said: Teveel is trop and trop is teveel.
What's wrong with simple independence for Flanders? Flanders won't fall in a void. Already a vast majority of the Dutch would welcome Flanders in a fusion with the Netherlands (according to a poll yesterday, see http://derwaarts.net/archives/145).
Fusion or confederation, whatever, Dutch and Flemings have much more in common than Flemings and Walloons: the language, the global business-mindset, the no-nonsense approach to economics, the ports, the infrastructure, and a common history (except for the last 180 disastrous years).
Nothing would change really. In Europe as a whole, country borders don't matter that much any more. We have free traffic of goods and people, and free labor migration. There will be no barbed wire. The French-speaking would still holiday on the coast. The Flemings would still enjoy the Ardennes. French-speaking "cadres" would still work in Flemish-Brabant or Brussels companies.
A separation would probably be very beneficial to the Walloons too, gaining self-respect again, not being dependent on their 16 billion EU allowance from Flanders. Mr. Reynders would make a fine president of Wallonia. He read the (global economics) handwritings on the wall, unlike pathetic clowns like Daerden that rather read the fuzz at the bottom of the bottle.
It's not that unthinkable. Actually, it happened before in 1830 when rattachists, paid by France, forced an illegal separation from the Kingdom of the Netherlands. The rest of Flanders only knew 3 weeks later that they suddenly became "Belgian" by a violent coup. Not much democracy there.
So let's just do it, a smooth velvet separation, and fast. Getting rid of Belgium is like going to the dentist. Too long postponed, but once it's done, you wonder how you could have standed it for so long. And let's go back to business then, in friendship and partnership.