FLEMISH NATIONALISTS are leading opinion polls before the Belgian general election next month, raising the prospect of renewed political stalemate as the country prepares to assume the EU’s rotating presidency.
As the EU authorities grapple with the euro sovereign debt crisis, the rise of the N-VA party led by Bart De Wever threatens to unseat the powerful Christian Democrats as the dominant force in the Flemish community.
Mr De Wever, described as an “extremist” in Belgian political circles, wants to devolve almost all domestic powers to the country’s regions from the federal state. The Christian Democrat leader, Marianne Thyssen, whose party led the last government, wants to defer institutional debate to focus on economic issues and the EU presidency.
According to Le Soir, a telephone poll by TNS/Dimarso gave Mr De Wever's party 26 per cent of the vote in the Flemish community against 19.5 per cent for the Christian Democrats.
The poll was commissioned by three political parties – one of them Mr De Wever’s – and was carried out at the start of May.
Following the collapse last month of a five-party coalition in a dispute over electoral reform, Mr De Wever’s advance could bring divisive institutional issues to the fore again.
Even amid recession, this question dominates the country’s linguistically divided politics. Dutch-speakers in Flanders, the prosperous north of Belgium, want greater autonomy. This spurs fears among French-speakers in Wallonia, the less prosperous south, that the country could disintegrate.
Belgium takes charge of the union’s agenda on July 1st, weeks after the election on June 13th. After the last election in 2007, it was 300 days before a government was formed. “There is general agreement that we can’t have a caretaker government running the presidency,” said a Belgian official.
Political leaders are discussing whether they might try to form a temporary coalition to see the country through the six-month EU presidency, while concentrating domestically on economic issues.
However, analysts say Mr De Wever would seek to block efforts to farm out institutional issues to a special committee if he held the balance of power.
A further difficulty is an alliance in the French-speaking region between liberals led by Didier Reynders and the nationalist FDF party, which wants to expand the bilingual Brussels region. This is anathema to many in Flanders.
