On August 22, 2024, Bart De Wever
of the New Flemish Alliance group in Belgium resigned as his efforts to form a
government had stalled. His group had won the most votes in the E.U. state’s
most recent election back in June, at which time King Philippe appointed De
Wever to find consensus among five groups on policies such as taxation on
capital gains. Belgium’s longest period without an elected government is an
incredible 592 days, which was set after the previous record of 541 days that had
been set after the 2010 elections.[1]
With two culturally-different regions, Belgium has been difficult to govern.
Being a state in a union could conceivably help Belgium in this regard.
A day after De Wever resigned, a
media report insisted that “Belgium must form a government to file a federal
budget to the European Commission by September 20, 2024.”[2]
Yet it seems easy enough to miss such a deadline. Rather than look for
administrative means by which being in the Union could pressure the state to
get its act together on governing, the possible impact may be more basic. Put
another way, thinking bureaucratically is not sufficiently “outside of the box.”
Theoretically, there being some
governmental sovereignty at the federal (i.e., E.U.) level takes the pressure
off a state to form a government because not all governmental responsibilities
are handled any longer at the state level. In other words, there is less riding
on which groups govern the member state. But the amount of sovereignty that had
been delegated by the states to the Union by 2024 was not sufficient to relieve
enough pressure, given that the 592 and 541 days had occurred when Belgium was
in the European Union. Furthermore, the heady game of politics can make virtually
anything seem important to political antagonists, even if major decisions
of public policy are taken elsewhere.
So, like the efficacy of any
administrative means by which the E.U. might attempt to chide a stalled state
into forming a government, taking the heat off is also unlikely to succeed. Being
in a union presents Belgium instead with the non-ideological alternative of
splitting into two E.U. states without them being foreign. In other words,
being in a political union effectively relativizes the fallout from splitting
up because both Flanders and Wallonia would still be in the Union; neither,
after all, would be the smallest state in the Union. The intractability in
governing should be a wake-up call, or indication, that maybe the two regions would
be better off as separate states; governing together just hasn’t worked out
very well.
Of course, opposing such a change, which seems drastic, is the ideology of nationalism and the related difficulty, especially in Europe, of letting go of some history. The same ideology has manifested in the E.U.’s Euroskeptic parties in the European Parliament to the potential detriment of the Union itself. Even conflating the union with a “bloc” is harmful in that Belgians would not realize the extent to which Flanders and Wallonia would still together by virtue of being states in the same union, which is substantially different than a trading bloc or military alliance. Citizens of Flanders and Wallonia would all be E.U. citizens, for example. They could live and work in the other state, and they wouldn’t have to go through customs in traveling back to visit old friends. Additionally, the currency wouldn’t change. They would all still be represented in the European Parliament.
Ironically, Belgians might even have a greater Flemish and Walloon cultural identity due to greater cohesion at the state level. Identifying more at the federal level—leveraging this—could thus make enhanced regional identity stronger rather than weaker. Il faut séparer être ensemble. It is a pity that thinking outside the box is perceived generally as radical, and thus as easily dismissable, and that making substantial rather than merely incremental change is often an up-hill battle, given the intractability of political will and the related momentum of stasis in the status quo, whether it is working or not.
2. Ibid.
