Country profile: Belgium Voting in Belgium is compulsory, so a reasonable turnout is guaranteed on June 13th for the election of 24 representatives to the European Parliament.
The threat of a fine for not voting is no guarantee citizens will be gripped with enthusiasm for the elections. In a country whose linguistic and geographical fissures have created layer upon layer of parliaments and governments, representative democracy has been cheapened. This year's electioneering is taking place in an atmosphere of weary cynicism.
It hardly helps that elections occur so frequently here. The European elections coincide with, and will be largely overshadowed by, elections to the Flemish, Walloon and Brussels regional parliaments.
Elections to the federal government took place only last May. The ruling coalition created after that election, composed of an alliance of liberals and socialists, both Dutch-speaking and francophone, has had less than a year to implement any legislative programme. Now it seems likely to be weakened by the regional elections.
Against this background, the future role of the European Union hardly gets a look-in in the current campaign. The merits and demerits of the proposed EU constitution are little discussed, partly because a consensus prevails among the mainstream parties: Belgians are generally in favour of the EU. The big issues for the election campaigns are domestic: jobs, social security and the customary linguistic tension.
Nevertheless, there are good reasons for outsiders to pay attention to Belgium's elections. There is a straight beauty contest between two politicians mooted as possible candidates for president of the next European Commission. Guy Verhofstadt, prime minister of Belgium since 1999, heads the list of Flemish liberal candidates for the European Parliament. No one seriously believes that he will take up his seat once elected: he will make way for someone lower down on his party's list. Apparently, this role of krypto-candidate is sufficiently blatant to be acceptable to the voters.
Pitted against him at the head of the Flemish Christian Democrats is Jean-Luc Dehaene, prime minister of Belgium before Verhofstadt, now on the board of Interbrew, a vice-president of the convention which drafted the European Constitution. Dehaene's party, once the mainstay of all post-war Belgian governments, has been out of power since 1999, but now has a comfortable lead in the polls.
A heavy defeat for Verhofstadt at the hands of Dehaene in the European elections might have two perhaps contradictory effects. While it would increase his ambition for the post of Commission president by hastening his fall from power in national politics, it would harm his candidacy by making him look like damaged goods. The Taoiseach, who must present a candidate to the European Council, might resolve that tension. It is also possible that Dehaene, chiefly famous in Britain as the presidential candidate vetoed by John Major, could gain new momentum as the choice of the centre-right for the job. So Pat Cox, Chris Patten and others among the talked-about candidates will keep a weather-eye on the elections in Belgium.
On the Walloon side, the lists are again headed by the big beasts of national politics: Louis Michel, the foreign minister, leader of the francophone liberals, and Elio di Rupo, leader of the socialists. The Christian Democrats are a much weaker force in Wallonia.
Support for the Greens has shrivelled since 1999.
Ever-growing support for the extreme-right is another reason why the Belgian elections will matter. The Flemish elected two members of the Vlaams Blok to the European Parliament in 1999. Opinion polls now put the VB ahead of Verhofstadt's party in Flanders. The tactic of excluding them from all city and regional administrations has fed rather than weakened their support.
Belgium seems to be on course for the kind of crisis that Europe previously saw with Jorg Haider's Freedom Party in Austria.