BELGIUM

May

Belgium

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The Kingdom of Belgium is a country in northwest Europe bordered by the Netherlands, Germany, Luxembourg and France, and is one of the founding and core members of the European Union. Belgium has a population of over ten-and-a-half million people, in an area of around 30,000 square kilometres (11,700 square miles).

Straddling the cultural boundary between Germanic and Latin Europe, Belgium is linguistically divided. In the Dutch-speaking northern region Flanders lives 58% of the population. Another 10% inhabits the officially bilingual Brussels-Capital Region, for approximately 85% using French. In this enclave within the Flemish Region however, neither language is the primary one for roughly half of the residents. French is the language in the southern region Wallonia apart from most of the 73,000 inhabitants of its German-speaking Community. This linguistic diversity often leads to political and cultural conflict and is reflected in Belgium’s complex system of government and political history.

Belgium derives its name from the Latin name of the northernmost part of Gaul, Gallia Belgica, named after a group of mostly Celtic tribes, Belgae. Historically, Belgium has been a part of the Low Countries, which also include the Netherlands and Luxembourg and used to cover a somewhat larger region than the current Benelux group of states. From the end of the Middle Ages until the seventeenth century, it was a prosperous centre of commerce and culture. From the sixteenth century until the Belgian revolution in 1830, the area at that time called the Southern Netherlands, was the site of many battles between the European powers, and has been dubbed “the battlefield of Europe” or “the cockpit of Europe”. More recently, Belgium was a founding member of the European Union, hosting its headquarters, as well as those of many other major international organizations, such as NATO.

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May

History

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Over the past two millennia, the area that is now known as Belgium has seen significant demographic, political and cultural upheavals. The first well-documented population move was the conquest of the region by the Roman Republic in the first century BC, followed in the fifth century by the Germanic Franks. The Franks established the Merovingian kingdom, which became the Carolingian Empire in the eighth century. During the Middle Ages the Low Countries were split into many small feudal states. Most of them were united in the course of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries by the house of Burgundy as the Burgundian Netherlands. These states gained a degree of autonomy in the fifteenth century and were thereafter named the Seventeen Provinces.

The Seventeen Provinces (orange, brown and yellow areas) and the Bishopric of Liège (green area). For a detailed description, see Seventeen Provinces.The history of Belgium can be distinguished from that of the Low Countries from the sixteenth century. The Eighty Years’ War (1568–1648), divided the Seventeen Provinces into the United Provinces in the north and the Southern Netherlands in the south. The southern provinces were ruled successively by the Spanish and the Austrian Habsburgs. Until independence, the Southern Netherlands were sought after by numerous French conquerors and were the theatre of most Franco-Spanish and Franco-Austrian wars during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Following the Campaigns of 1794 in the French Revolutionary Wars, the Low Countries—including territories that were never under Habsburg rule, such as the Bishopric of Liège—were overrun by France, ending Spanish-Austrian rule in the region. The reunification of the Low Countries as the United Kingdom of the Netherlands occurred at the end of the French Empire in 1815.

The 1830 Belgian Revolution led to the establishment of an independent, Catholic and neutral Belgium under a provisional government and a national congress. Since the installation of Leopold I as king in 1831, Belgium has been a constitutional monarchy and parliamentary democracy. Between independence and World War II, the democratic system evolved from an oligarchy characterised by two main parties, the Catholics and the Liberals, to a universal suffrage system that has included a third party, the Labour Party, and a strong role for the trade unions. Originally, French, which was the adopted language of the nobility and the bourgeoisie, was the official language. The country has since developed a bilingual Dutch-French system, but only in 1967 an official Dutch version of the Constitution was accepted.

Episode of the Belgian Revolution of 1830, Egide Charles Gustave Wappers (1834), in the Ancient Art Museum, Brussels.The Berlin Conference of 1885 agreed to hand over Congo to King Leopold II as his private possession, called the Congo Free State. In 1908, it was ceded to Belgium as a colony, henceforth called the Belgian Congo. Belgium’s neutrality was violated in 1914, when Germany invaded Belgium as part of the Schlieffen Plan. The former German colonies Ruanda-Urundi—now called Rwanda and Burundi—were occupied by the Belgian Congo in 1916. They were mandated in 1924 to Belgium by the League of Nations. Belgium was again invaded by Germany in 1940 during the blitzkrieg offensive. The country was occupied until the winter of 1944-45 when it was liberated by Allied troops. The Belgian Congo gained its independence in 1960 during the Congo Crisis, and Ruanda-Urundi became independent in 1962.

After World War II, Belgium joined NATO and, together with the Netherlands and Luxembourg, formed the Benelux group of nations. Belgium is also one of the six founding members of the 1951 established European Coal and Steel Community, and the 1957 established European Economic Community and European Atomic Energy Community. Belgium hosts the headquarters of NATO and a major part of the European Union’s institutions and administrations, including the European Commission, the Council of the European Union and the extraordinary and committee sessions of the European Parliament, as well as parts of its administration.

During the twentieth century, and in particular since World War II, the history of Belgium has been increasingly dominated by the autonomy of its two main communities. This period saw a rise in intercommunal tensions, and the unity of the Belgian state has come under scrutiny. Through constitutional reforms in the 1970s and 1980s, regionalisation of the unitary state had led to the establishment of a three-tiered system of federalism, linguistic-community and regional governments, a compromise designed to minimise linguistic tensions. Nowadays, these federal entities uphold more legislative power than the national bicameral parliament, whereas national government still controls nearly all taxation, over 80% of the finances of the community and region governments, and 100% of the social security.

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May

Government and Politics

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Categories: Government and Politics

Belgium is a constitutional popular monarchy and parliamentary democracy that evolved after World War II from a unitary state to a federation. The bicameral parliament is composed of a Senate and a Chamber of Representatives. The former is a mix of directly elected senior politicians and representatives of the communities and regions; while the latter represents all Belgians over the age of eighteen in a proportional voting system. Belgium is one of the few countries that has compulsory voting, thus having one of the highest rates of voter turnout in the world.

The federal government, formally nominated by the king, must have the confidence of the Chamber of Representatives. It is led by the Prime Minister. The numbers of Dutch- and French-speaking ministers are equal as prescribed by the Constitution. The King is the head of state, though with limited prerogatives. Actual power is vested in the Prime Minister and the different governments, who govern the country. The judicial system is based on civil law and originates from the Napoleonic code. The Court of Appeal is one level below the Court of Cassation.

Belgium’s political institutions are complex; most political power is organized around the need to represent the main language communities. Since around 1970, the significant national Belgian political parties have split into distinct components that mainly represent the interests of these communities (that is to say along political as well as linguistic fronts). The major parties in each community, though close to the political centre, belong to three main political families: the right-wing Liberals, the social conservative Christian Democrats, and the Socialists as left-wing. Other important younger parties are the Green party and —nowadays mainly in Flanders— nationalist parties, in particular the far-right Vlaams Belang. Politics is influenced by lobby groups, such as trade unions and business interests in the form of the Trade Federation of Enterprises in Belgium.

The current king, Albert II, succeeded King Baudouin in 1993. Since 1999, Prime Minister Guy Verhofstadt from the VLD has led a six-party Liberal-Social Democrat-Greens coalition, often referred to as ‘the rainbow government’. This was the first government without the Christian Democrats since 1958. In the 2003 elections, Verhofstadt won a second term in office and has led a Liberal-Social Democrat coalition of four parties. In recent years, there has also been a steady rise of the Flemish far right nationalist separatist party Vlaams Blok, meanwhile superseded by Vlaams Belang amidst allegations of racism promoted by the party.

A significant achievement of the two successive Verhofstadt governments has been the achievement of a balanced budget; Belgium is one of the few member-states of the EU to have done so. This policy was applied by the successive governments during the 1990s under pressure from the European Council. The fall of the previous government was mainly because of the dioxin crisis, a major food intoxication scandal in 1999 that led to the establishment of the Belgian Food Agency. This event resulted in an atypically large representation by the Greens in parliament, and a greater emphasis on environmental politics during the first Verhofstadt government. One Green policy, for example, resulted in nuclear phase-out legislation, which has been modified by the current government. The absence of Christian Democrats from the ranks of the government has enabled Verhofstadt to tackle social issues from a more liberal point of view and to develop new legislation on the use of soft drugs, same-sex marriage and euthanasia. During the two most recent parliaments, the government has promoted active diplomacy in Africa, opposed a military intervention during the Iraq disarmament crisis, and has passed legislation concerning war crimes. Both of Verhofstadt’s terms have been marked by disputes between the Belgian communities. The major points of contention are the nocturnal air traffic routes at Brussels Airport and the status of the electoral district of Brussels-Halle-Vilvoorde.

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May

Geography, Climate and Environment

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Categories: Geography and Climate and Environment

Belgium, with a land area of 30 528 square kilometres (33,990 km² in total), has three main geographical regions: the coastal plain in the north-west, the central plateau, and the Ardennes uplands in the south-east. The coastal plain consists mainly of sand dunes and polders. Polders are areas of land, close to or below sea level that have been reclaimed from the sea, from which they are protected by dikes or, further inland, by fields that have been drained with canals. The second geographical region, the central plateau, lies further inland. This is a smooth, slowly rising area that has many fertile valleys and is irrigated by many waterways. Here one can also find rougher land, including caves and small gorges. Belgium shares borders with France 620 km, Germany 167 km, Luxembourg 148 km and Netherlands 450 km.

High Fens in the Ardennes.The third geographical region, called the Ardennes, is more rugged than the first two. It is a thickly forested plateau, very rocky and not very good for farming, which extends into northern France and in Germany where it is named Eifel. This is where much of Belgium’s wildlife can be found. Belgium’s highest point, the Signal de Botrange, is located in this region at only 694 metres (2,277 ft).

The climate is maritime temperate, with significant precipitation in all seasons (Köppen climate classification: Cfb; the average temperature is 3 °C (37 °F) in January, and 18° C (64 °F) in July; the average precipitation is 65 millimetres (2.6 in) in January, and 78 millimetres (3.1 in) in July). This century’s year round average daily minimum temperature is 7 °C (45 °F), maximum at 14 °C (57 °F); average monthly rainfall is 65 millimetres (2.6 in).

Because of its high population density, location in the centre of Western Europe and too little political effort, Belgium faces serious environmental problems. A 2003 report suggested that the water in Belgium’s rivers was of the lowest quality in Europe, and bottom of the 122 countries studied.

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May

Economy

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Categories: Economy

Densely populated, Belgium is located at the heart of one of the world’s most highly industrialised regions. Currently, the Belgium economy is heavily service-oriented and shows a dual nature with a dynamic Flemish part and Brussels as its main multilingual and multi-ethnic centre and a GNP/person which is one of the highest in the European Union, and a Walloon economy that lags roughly one quarter behind (in GNP/person).

Steelmaking along the Meuse River at Ougrée, near Liège.Belgium was the first continental European country to undergo the Industrial Revolution, in the early 1800s. Liège and Charleroi rapidly developed mining and steelmaking, which flourished until the mid-20th century. However, by the 1840s the textile industry of Flanders was in severe crisis and there was famine in Flanders (1846–50). After World War II, Ghent and Antwerp experienced a fast expansion of the chemical and petroleum industries. The 1973 and 1979 oil crises sent the economy into a prolonged recession. The Belgian steel industry has since experienced serious decline. This has been responsible for inhibiting the economic development of Wallonia. In the 1980s and 90s, the economic centre of the country continued to shift northwards to Flanders. Today, industry is concentrated in the populous Flemish area in the north.

By the end of the 1980s, Belgian macroeconomic policies had resulted in a cumulative government debt of about 120% of GDP. Currently, budget is in balance and public debt is equal to 90.30% of GDP (2006). In 2005 and 2006 the real growth rate of GDP was estimated at 1.5% and 3.0% respectively, both slightly above the average for the euro area.

Belgium has a particularly open economy. It has developed an excellent transportation infrastructure of ports, canals, railways and roads to integrate its industry with that of its neighbours. The Port of Antwerp is the second-largest European port and Zeebrugge, the modern port of Bruges, is an important European port as well. One of the founding members of the European Union, Belgium strongly supports the extension of the powers of EU institutions to integrate the member economies. In 1999, Belgium adopted the euro, the single European currency, which replaced the Belgian franc in 2002. The Belgian economy is strongly oriented towards foreign trade, in particular of high value-added goods. The main imports are food products, machinery, rough diamonds, petroleum and petroleum products, chemicals, clothing and accessories, and textiles. The main exports are automobiles, food and food products, iron and steel, finished diamonds, textiles, plastics, petroleum products, and nonferrous metals. Since 1922, Belgium and Luxembourg have been a single trade market within a customs and currency union—the Belgium-Luxembourg Economic Union. Its main trading partners are Germany, the Netherlands, France, the United Kingdom, Italy, the United States and Spain. Belgium ranks thirteenth on the 2006 United Nations Human Development Index.

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May

Demographics

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Categories: Demographics

The population density (342 per km² or 886 per sq. mi) of Belgium is one of the highest in Europe, after that of the Netherlands and some microstates such as Monaco. The areas with the highest population density are the Flemish Diamond outlined by the Antwerp-Leuven-Brussels-Ghent agglomerations, as well as other important urban centres as Liège, Charleroi, Mons, Kortrijk, Bruges, Hasselt and Namur. The Ardennes have the lowest density. As of 2006, the Flemish Region has a population of about 6,078,600, Wallonia 3,413,978 and Brussels 1,018,804. Almost all of the population is urban (97.3% in 1999). Statistics of 1991 indicate for Flanders and Wallonia, two out of three inhabitants to be proprietors of their dwelling, in the Brussels-Capital Region 40%. The main cities and their populations are Brussels (1,018,804 in the region’s 19 municipalities, four of which have over 100,000 inhabitants), Antwerp (457,749), Ghent (230,951), Charleroi (201,373), Liège (185,574) and Bruges (117,251)

There are no official statistics on Belgium’s three official languages (or their dialects) that inhabitants prefer. As no census exists, such is not always simply established for an individual (language of which parent or of which years of education). Figures here given for Dutch, French or German include foreign immigrants and their children for whom neither is necessarily the primary language. 59% of the Belgian population, being 6.23 million people in the north, mainly in the region Flanders, speaks Dutch (while Belgians of both major languages often refer to it as Flemish) ; French is spoken by 40%: 3.32 million in the southern region Wallonia and an estimated 0.87 million or 85% of the officially bilingual Brussels-Capital Region – thus a minority of perhaps 0.15 million there speaks Dutch, its local language till shortly before Belgium’s independence. In this enclave within the Flemish Region however, the share of native French and Dutch speakers has by recent immigration rapidly declined. With about 56.5% of inhabitants of foreign origin, usually natively neither French nor Dutch-speaking, neither language is the primary one for roughly half of the capital region’s population (though 74% has the Belgian nationality). In general the population of Brussels is younger and the gap between rich and poor is wider. Of the 73,000 people of the German-speaking Community in the east of the Walloon Region, around 10,000 German and 60,000 Belgian nationals are speakers of German; roughly 23,000 more of its speakers live in municipalities near the official Community.

A survey published in 2006 by the Université Catholique de Louvain, demonstrated the “undoubtedly wellknown” better multilingualism in Flanders to be considerable: 59% of the Flemish respondents can speak French, 53% English; the Walloons on the other hand, merely 19% Dutch, 17% English; of the Brussels’ population, 95% declare to speak French, 59% Dutch, English is known by 41%. In these respective regions, 59, 10, and 28 percent of people under forty can speak all three languages. In each region, German is considerably less known than any of the forementioned languages.

Both the Dutch spoken in Belgium and the Belgian French have minor differences in vocabulary and semantic nuances from the varieties spoken in the Netherlands and France. Many people can still speak dialects of Dutch, but the Walloon language that was once the main dialect of Wallonia is now only understood and spoken occasionally, mostly by elderly people. The latter dialects, along with some other ones like Picard, are not used in public life.

About 86 percent of the Belgian population has the Belgian nationality; 9 percent are either (in order of their numbers) Italian, Moroccan, French, Turkish or Dutch and 5% has one of various other nationalities.

Since independence, Catholicism, counterbalanced by strong freethought movements, has had an important role in Belgium’s politics. The laicist constitution provides for freedom of religion, and the government generally respects this right in practice. Nevertheless, symbolically and materially the Roman Catholic Church stays in a favourable position, and the concept of ‘recognized religion’ caused a tedious path for Islam to become at the level of Jewish and Protestant religions, other minority religions such as Buddhism do not yet have such status. The monarchy has a reputation of deep Catholicism, which has required the then christian-democrat Prime Minister Martens to have former King Baudouin declared ‘temporarily unfit to reign’ in order to enpower a law opposed by Rome after it had been passed by both chambers. According to the 2001 Survey and Study of Religion, about 47 percent of the population identify themselves as belonging to the Catholic Church while Islam is the second-largest religion at 3.5 percent. A 2006 inquiry in Flanders, considered more religious than Wallonia, showed 55% to call themselves religious, 36% believe that God created the world.

An estimated 98 percent of the adult population is literate. Education is compulsory from the ages of six to 18, but many Belgians continue to study until the age of about 23. Among the OECD countries in 1999, Belgium had the third-highest proportion of 18–21-year-olds enrolled in postsecondary education, at 42 percent. Nevertheless, in recent years, concern is rising over functional illiteracy. In the period 1994–1998, 18.4 percent of the population lacked functional literacy skills. Mirroring the historical political conflicts between the freethought and Catholic segments of the population, the Belgian educational system in each community is split into a laïque branch controlled by the communities, the provinces, or the municipalities, and a subsidised religious – mostly Catholic – branch controlled by both the communities and the religious authorities – usually the dioceses though the religious authorities within Catholic schools have limited power.

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May

Culture

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Belgian cultural life has tended to concentrate within each community. The shared element is less important, because there are no bilingual universities besides the Royal Military Academy, no common media, and no single, common large cultural or scientific organisation where both main communities are represented.

The Tower of Babel, by Pieter Brueghel the Elder, (1563) oil on board, now found in Vienna’s Kunsthistorisches Museum.Belgium is well-known for its fine art and architecture. The region corresponding to today’s Belgium has seen the flourishing of major artistic movements that have had tremendous influence over European art. The Mosan art, the Early Netherlandish, the Flemish Renaissance and Baroque painting, and major examples of Romanesque, Gothic, Renaissance and Baroque architecture, and the Renaissance vocal music of the Franco-Flemish School developed in the southern part of the Low Countries, are milestones in the history of art. Famous names in this classic tradition are Jan van Eyck, Pieter Brueghel the Elder, Peter Paul Rubens and Anthony van Dyck. This rich artistic production, as a whole usually referred to with little distinction between Flemish and Dutch, gradually declined during the second half of the seventeenth century ; high quality tapestry however, continued to be created till well into the eighteenth. In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, many original artists appeared. Belgium has produced famous romantic, expressionist and surrealist painters; these include Egide Wappers, James Ensor, Constant Permeke and René Magritte.

In music, Adolphe Sax invented the saxophone in 1846. Henri Vieuxtemps, Eugène Ysaÿe and Arthur Grumiaux were major nineteenth- and twentieth-century violinists. The first Belgian singer to successfully pursue an international career is the pioneer of varieté and pop music Bobbejaan Schoepen. Jazz musician Toots Thielemans is world famous, so are the singers Jacques Brel and Italy-born Adamo. In rock/pop music, K’s Choice, Hooverphonic, Front 242 and dEUS are well known. In architecture, Victor Horta and Henry van de Velde were major initiators of the Art Nouveau style.[62]In literature, Belgium has produced several well-known authors, such as the poets Emile Verhaeren and novelists Hendrik Conscience, Georges Simenon and Suzanne Lilar. The poet and playwright Maurice Maeterlinck won the Nobel Prize in literature in 1911. The best known Franco-Belgian comics are The Adventures of Tintin by Hergé but many other major authors of comics have been Belgian, including Peyo (the smurfs), André Franquin, Edgar P. Jacobs and Willy Vandersteen. Belgian cinema, often showing influences by Dutch or French cinema, brought a number of mainly Flemish novels to new life. The absence of a major Belgian cinema company has forced several talented directors to emigrate, or participate in low-budget productions such as Marc Didden’s Brussels by Night (1983). Other Belgian directors include André Delvaux, Stijn Coninx, Luc and Jean-Pierre Dardenne; actors include Jan Decleir, Marie Gillain; and films include Man Bites Dog (film) and The Alzheimer Affair. In the 1980s, Antwerp’s Royal Academy of Fine Arts produced important fashion trendsetters, known as the Antwerp Six. Belgium has a thriving contemporary art scene, with internationally renowned artists such as Jan Fabre and the painter Luc Tuymans.

Belgium has also contributed to the development of science and technology. Mathematician Simon Stevin, anatomist Andreas Vesalius and cartographer Gerardus Mercator are among the most influential scientists from the beginning of the Early Modern Age in the Low Countries. More recently, at the end of the nineteenth century, in applied science, the chemist Ernest Solvay and the engineer Zenobe Gramme have given their names to the Solvay process and the Gramme dynamo. Georges Lemaître is a famous Belgian cosmologist credited with proposing the Big Bang theory of the origin of the universe in 1927. Three Nobel Prizes in Physiology or Medicine have been awarded to Belgians: Jules Bordet in 1919, Corneille Heymans in 1938, and Albert Claude and Christian De Duve in 1974. Ilya Prigogine was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1977.

One cannot understand Belgian cultural life without considering the folk festivals,[citation needed] which play a major role in the country’s cultural life. Examples are the Carnival of Binche and Aalst, the Ducasse of Ath, the procession of the Holy Blood in Bruges, the August 15 festival in Liège, and the Walloon festival in Namur. A major non-official holiday is the Saint Nicholas Day, which commemorates the festival of the children and, in Liège, of the students.

Football and cycling are especially popular. Among the wellknown cyclists, Eddy Merckx is considered one of the best cyclists ever because of his five victories of the Tour de France and numerous other bicycle races as well as for his several records, in particular the hour speed record in 1972 that lasted twelve years. Belgium has two current female tennis champions: Kim Clijsters (who, at less than 24 years of age, on 6 May 2007 decided her tennis career to have ended), and Justine Henin. The Spa-Francorchamps motor-racing circuit is home to the Formula One World Championship Belgian Grand Prix. Belgium’s most notable racing driver is Jacky Ickx, winner of eight Grands Prix and six times winner of the 24 Hours of Le Mans. Belgium has also a strong reputation in motocross with many world champions, among others Roger De Coster, Joel Robert, Georges Jobé, Eric Geboers and Stefan Everts.

Belgium is well known for its cuisine. Many highly ranked restaurants can be found in the high-impact gastronomic guides, such as the Michelin Guide. Brands of Belgian chocolate, like Neuhaus, and Godiva, are world renowned and widely sold. In addition to chocolate, Belgian sweets have a reputation of very high quality. Confiserie Roodthooft in Antwerp produces the famous ‘Mokatine’, also known as the ‘Arabier’. Belgium produces over 500 varieties of beer. The biggest brewery in the world by volume is Inbev based in Belgium. Belgians have a reputation for loving waffles and French fried potatoes (both originate from Belgium). The national dishes are steak-fries and lettuce, and mussels-fries.

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