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Why Flemish Independence Is Important for Europe
02/01/2008 :: On 24 November, the British author John Laughland gave a speech in Brussels about Flemish independence. Below is an excerpt:
The question of the break-up of Belgium is no longer taboo in the Western European press. On the contrary, it is discussed openly as a possible, even likely future event.
There is no question that an independent Flanders could be a viable state. In terms of population, Flanders is bigger than the historic nation-states Denmark, Norway and Ireland, and than many more recently created states. There is no question that Flanders has the requisite historic identity to constitute a sovereign state. It certainly has more claim to historical existence than Bosnia.
The reason why the break-up of Belgium will be opposed by the European Union is that it will not serve the cause of EU integration. The break-up of Belgium would show that the fault-line which is at the heart of the European project runs right through the EU’s very capital. That fault-line is the contradiction between democracy and supranationalism. Flemings of course understand that a supranational state is inimical to democracy, and that it destroys it.
Fatal Flaw
The main EU decisions are taken in secret by the unelected Commission and the unaccountable Council of Ministers. National parliaments are systematically emasculated by the EU, which gives governments the right to make laws, in secret. The fact that the defunct European Constitution is even now being re-introduced, having been rejected in referendums in France and the Netherlands in 2005 shows that the EU is prepared to override the results of democratic direct polls in order to achieve its aims. Democracy is actively suppressed by European integration.
The break-up of Belgium would be a highly symbolic of this fatal flaw. Many Belgian leaders including the late King Baudoin indeed said that the EU was a sort of Greater Belgium.
Service
The European Union now displays all the worst characteristics of Belgium itself: an impossibly complicated institutional structure which is kept that way deliberately in order to serve vested interests; an opaque and deliberately undemocratic decision-making process; a vast system of internal financing which is used to pervert the political process by buying off certain powerful interest groups; and of course rampant corruption.
By showing up the Belgian model itself as a lie, the independence of Flanders would provide a great service to democracy and to the whole of Europe.
Article in issue nº 21
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