Would it be better if the Walloons and Flemish had their own states, or became part of France and the Netherlands? Or is the current arrangement fine?
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Would it be better if the Walloons and Flemish had their own states, or became part of France and the Netherlands? Or is the current arrangement fine?
Let it be the way it is. Maybe they just need some constitutional reforms but that's about it. I think the good way of solving the Brussels problems would be to chuck out the immigrants and then make it attractive for the Flemish to move in so the linguistic situation would become 50/50 again.
Besides.. I always hear that the Walloons don't feel like joining France and the Flemish don't like joining the Netherlands and both have their historical reasons. Then let Belgium be Belgium.
Don't know, but i think Belgian nationalism isn't very strong. Flemish on the other hand...
It's not just Flanders or Wallonia, as not all of Oil Belgium speaks Walloon, but also Picard or even Champagnese and Lorrain. As well as an eastern area where they speak Central Franconian (Ripuarian and Luxembourgish).
Its a peaceful little nation, why bother?
I want to keep Belgium together until it can be reunited for dynastic reasons into a kind of devolved United Kingdom through intermarriage between the Belgian and Dutch Royal Families. In that way the country won't be split up and stays together and both countries can still do their own thing in the way both England and Scotland can do their own things (tax systems, home rule, laws, education system, healthcare system etc.) and whether a unification of the Dutch and Belgian parliaments will be needed ? I am not sure. But it doesn't have to go much further than an Union of the Crowns.
I see. A union of the crowns is too loose though. Britain, Canada, Jamaica and NZ have a union of crowns for example yet they have no real political union.
A political union like the UK would probably be better, but with a federal structure implemented from the start.
That could work as well but the union should be devolved from the start so f.i "Westminster" Brussels only deals with matters of national importance such as the infrastructure, the wider economy and foreign affairs. The rest should be left to The Hague and the Belgian government in Brussels. There should be a single currency: let's make it the Guilder (Gulden/Florin) or the Franc (frank/franc).
Some organisations that we have now could be united such as the public news stations, the infrastructure boards, the wider way in which the economy is ran (the blueprint for that could the Dutch Polder Model), the ANWB with it's Belgian sister organisation, the railways, the armed forces.