Talk:Belgium

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Two notes

Two notes that are important in Belgium: - 11 billion euros transfered yearly from Flanders to Wallonia. This wouldn't be a problem if Flanders could somehow make this money useful in Wallonia. However Wallonia deliberately obfuscates it's budget and spending, all at the same time veto'ing any laws that would have Flanders get a clue about what happens with it's money. Of course all in the name of "solidarity".

- Belgium has a remarkably stable political climate. The Christian and Liberal parties exist for over a 100 years since the independance of the country. Since the 1920's the Socialist party has been a major force. Since the 1980's the Greens have become a small but persistent party. All in all the ratio of votes between the 3 major parties has been slow to shift. Several minor parties have tried but most don't survive 2 elections. The right-wing N-VA and the extreme-right Flemmish Bloc are exceptions to this however with a system called "cordon sanitaire" these parties don't get invited for coalition talks, sooner or later disappearing due to irrelevance.

A running joke in Belgium says that the "socialist" Barack Obama is still more right-wing that our most extreme party, the VB. 195.130.159.242 (talk) 11:37, 2 November 2011 (UTC)

As can be seen from the above comment, all the fundamentalist debates in Belgium are about language instead of religion or right-left wing. Political parties have realized that language is a sensitive issue and that it's a very, very easy way to get a lot of votes. While the cordon sanitaire really exists and can be seen as somewhat non-democratic, it mainly exists because the two named parties want to literally split the country. This would change nothing since there are similar squabbles between West and East Flanders. In any case, the point is moot since neither part of the country wants to let go of Brussels.

While Flanders currently is the richest part of Belgium, the opposite used to be true since Wallonia was once the part of the country where coal mines were situated. These things can obviously change in the course of several decades.

And the German-speaking part of Belgium were added to it after the second World War. It is believed that they'd rather be a part of Germany again.^{— Unsigned, by: 85.91.175.213 / talk / contribs}

To bring clarification to the last two sentences: in fact the German-speaking part of Belgium has been added as a consequence of the Treaty of Versailles after WWI and not after WWII. The so-called East Cantons had a rather complicated history, in particular during the first half of the 20Template:Th century. Nevertheless nowadays there is only a small part of these people who would want to go back to Germany (furthermore in case Belgium would split it is likely that the district of St. Vith would rather ask to join the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg). No wonder as one often sais the German-speaking community of Belgium (which represent 70,000 people on a Belgian population of more that 10 millions) is the best protected ethnic or linguistic minority in the world.

This being said despite providing a rather good overview of Belgium and its awful - and incomprehensible (even for most of the Belgian population) political system - the article still contains some inaccuracies. For instance the sentence "It is considered a possibility that Flanders may secede from the state in the not-too-distant future, with separatist parties leading the polls with over 50% of possible votes" is very debatable to say the least. This is something I hear since at least 20 years (do not rely on my Swiss IP, I am a Belgian who lives in Geneva) but there are still no concrete moves in that direction. And the source quoted in the article to back-up this statement is almost seven years old. Once I find time to do so I will try to develop a little bit this article. But do not expect me to fully explain how the Belgian political system is set up. This is definitely much more difficult than Mission:Impossible. --62.167.144.75 (talk) 19:29, 28 February 2014 (UTC)

I could take a stab at bringing the article up to date a bit, when I find the time. I have already updated the part about the Royal Family. Most of the political part of the article is horribly inaccurate. For starters, the polls brought the separatist party at 30 %, and most of that was because they never actually said they were a separatist party at the time. In addition, their popularity is probaly falling since the party is making mistakes comparable to what I hear about the Religious Right. However, it may be prudent to wait until after the elections later this year. ^{— Unsigned, by: 85.91.175.213 / talk / contribs} 14:21, 27 March 2014‎ (UTC)

Flemish Nationalism

Flanders has 2 political parties that like to spread Nationalistic propaganda (since 2004, when Bart De Wever because the leader of N-VA (he's an instigator, so)), with one of them being mentioned by Conservapedia for their "heroic deeds" (I would link to Conservapedia's "VN Migration Pact" article, but for some reason I can't find it, unless they erased it.) or something like that (N-VA is Right-Wing with some Right-Wing to Far-Right members that joined them from Flemish Interest (Flemish Interest is Far-Right, but the one's that left the party, were people that didn't think 100% of the Kool-Aid. Only 75%.), not Centre-Right to Right-Wing. That's just wikipedia's "Centrist Point Of View" taking place (being afraid to call the kettle black.).

Perhaps missional, since last elections were quite alarming and the latest polls aren't showing any improvement... 2A02:1812:2C66:D000:C967:7F13:11EA:4092 (talk) 01:04, 17 October 2021 (UTC)