Word: belgiums
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Perhaps it was the advent of Christmas that focused the minds of Belgium's squabbling factions, who finally joined together Friday to form an emergency coalition government. Because there have been precious few gestures of goodwill between Belgium's Flemish and French speakers during six months of political deadlock that seemed to tear the country apart...
...Tensions have always existed between the Flemish, who account for around 60% of Belgium's 10.5 million citizens, and the French speakers. But the stalemate since the June 10 elections appear to have frayed ties even more, with the Flemish in particular questioning why they should be subsidizing the French speakers, based mainly in the poorer, southern region of Wallonia. The bad blood even extended to the Miss Belgium contest in Antwerp last weekend: the eventual winner, Alizée Poulicek, is of Czech origin, but despite speaking French and English, her failure to master Dutch earned her boos from...
...officials failed to persuade either Portugal or Belgium to back down so that the hour-long signing ceremony and the summit could take place in a single city. It means E.U. leaders will thus consecrate the treaty revamp with cumbersome travel arrangements that seem to reinforce the impression of the E.U. as run by remote, unaccountable mandarins...
...Some E.U. leaders have attempted to counter their jet-setting image by plane-pooling. The prime ministers of the Benelux nations - Belgium's Guy Verhofstadt, the Netherlands's Jan Peter Balkenende and Luxembourg's Jean-Claude Juncker - will share rather than each take a private plane. Similarly, Swedish Prime Minister Frederik Reinfeldt will travel with Denmark's Anders Fogh Rasmussen, and their Finnish and Estonian counterparts Matti Vanhanen and Andrus Ansip will also share planes...
King Albert II has asked the country's caretaker Prime Minister, Guy Verhofstadt, to seek a solution to Belgium's existential crisis. Yet that task seems sapped of any great urgency as life goes on without a national government. The trains run on time, the beer flows cold and plentiful, and the Belgian national soccer team still can't score. The drifting apart of Belgium's linguistic communities could augur the end for a country once hailed as a model of compromise and coexistence. Hoeilaart's elders have clearly had enough of that model. But no one knows what...