Belgium: The Congo of Europe

Headquarters of the Common Market, on which Europe’s hope of unity is pinned, Belgium is itself an eloquent example of disunity. It is so torn by the linguistic rivalries of Dutch-speaking Flemings and French-speaking Walloons that outsiders sometimes wonder how the country stays together at all. Last week one of the longest Cabinet crises in Belgian history (65 days) ended when Pierre Harmel, 54, wearily patched together a government and received the seal of office from King Baudouin.

The root of the crisis goes all the way back to 1830, when the Catholic Flemings and Walloons broke away from Protestant Holland to form a new country. For more than a century, the prosperous Walloons dominated things from their industrial southern strongholds; the northern Flemings were the poor relations. After World War II the balance shifted. The population advantage moved to the Flemings—5,250,000 to 4,000,000—and industry flocked to the cheap labor supply of Flanders. Flemish nationalism flourished, and Flemings bitterly protested that, although Dutch and French had official parity, French was still the language for Flemings who wanted to rise to the top. Few Walloons, they complained, bothered to learn Dutch.

“The Belgians are the Congolese of Europe,” sniffed an African diplomat as tension approached flash point four years ago. In 1962 and 1963, Walloon and Flemish rioters clashed in the streets of Brussels. Finally, the government devised a plan to end the dispute. French would be the official language of the south, Dutch of the north; Brussels, a French-speaking island in the north, would be bilingual. Extremists on both sides rejected the plan: many Flemings wanted to set up their own semi-autonomous state; the Walloons wanted to keep things as they were—with French the preferred language.

Last May the plan was overwhelmingly rejected when voters handed the ruling coalition a stunning setback in national elections. Harmel, a law professor and one of the rare Walloons who speak Dutch, is an expert on the problem, therefore seemed a likely choice to revive the battered coalition. He still hopes to win support for language reform. The issue is far from settled. Shortly before the new Premier took office, 80 Flemings stalked out of a church in the Flemish seaside resort of Ostend when the priest began the Mass in French for vacationing Walloons.