Why Flemish Independence Is Important for Europe
http://www.flemishrepublic.org/1/202/26/2008 :: 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.
Read John Laughland's speech “Independence for Flanders – good for democracy, good for Europe” [PDF]:
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“Independence for Flanders – good for democracy, good for Europe”
Lecture by John Laughland, Brussels, 24th November 2007.
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. Most recently in The Guardian on 13th November 2007, Jon Henley
wrote that the break‐up seemed inevitable (even though he personally opposes it)
while of course The Economist had written a similar thing in September.
The independence of Flanders has therefore become a matter of mainstream
political debate.
What will the attitude of the rest of Europe be to the break‐up of Belgium?
As one surveys the geopolitics of post Cold War Europe, one can say only that one is
struck by the double standards with which the EU and the US treat the question of
national independence.
On the one hand, since 1991, no fewer than fifteen new states have emerged
on the European continent as a result of secessionist movements (Latvia, Estonia,
Lithuania, Belarus, Ukraine, Moldova, Russia, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Serbia,
Montenegro, Croatia, Slovenia, Bosnia‐Herzegovina, Macedonia). Powerful
countries in the West worked actively for the break‐up of Yugoslavia and the Soviet
Union, and of course their efforts were successful. This is in spite of the fact that
those states, unlike Belgium, were essentially united by a common language.
Now, indeed, the European Union is actively supporting a sixteenth
secession, that of Kosovo. Following the election victory of the PDK in Kosovo’s
parliamentary elections on Sunday 18th November ‐ a party led by the former head of
the Kosovo Liberation Army, Hashim Thaci – it is inevitable now that Kosovo will
declare independence at some point between 10th December, when the deadline
expires for the talks with Belgrade at the UN, and the end of the year.
The West has egged the Kosovo Albanians on, saying that it will recognise an
independent Kosovo if the Albanians do indeed proclaim their independence. Such
a move will represent a flagrant breach of international law, since the status of
Kosovo as part of Serbia is governed by a U.N. Resolution passed in 1999.
The independence of Kosovo of course follows the secession of Montenegro
from Serbia‐Montenegro in June 2006, even though Serbs and Montenegrins are one
and the same people, speaking the same language and sharing the same religion and
history.
On the other hand, the West opposes secessions when they do not suit it geo‐
politically. Bosnia‐Herzegovina is a case in point. When the Prime Minister of
Republika Srpska called in September 2006 for a referendum to be held on the
secession of Republiak Srpska from Bosnia‐Herzegovina, the international
community’s “High Representative” said that he would sack him unless he backed
down. He did, but there is even now a crisis in Bosnia, as the new High
Representative is trying to abrogate important parts of RS’ autonomy. Bosnia is an
EU colony ‐ the 16,000 soldiers still stationed there (twelve years after the end of the
war) are part of an EU military force – and the EU clearly does not want its territory
to be divided.
The same goes for Transnistria in Moldova. Even though that territory voted
by a massive majority in September 2006 for continued independence from Moldova,
the West refused to recognise the results of that referendum. Indeed, Europe’s main
election‐monitoring body, the OSCE, refused even to observe the poll saying that
“The OSCE does not support a unilateral referendum questioning Moldovaʹs
territorial integrity.” The author of that quotation is none other than the then OSCE
chairman, the Belgian Foreign Minister Karel de Gucht. This is in spite of the fact
that the legal reason why Moldova seceded from the USSR is that it revoked the
Molotov‐Ribbentrop Pact of September 1939, by means of which Bessarabia was
annexed to the USSR. But that annexation also involved the annexation of
Transnistria to what became the Moldovan Soviet Socialist Republic, to which it had
never previously belonged.
Further afield, the West also opposes independence movements in Georgia
(South Ossetia and Abkhazia) and Azerbaijan (Nagorno‐Karabakh) even though
these territories, like Transnistria, have been independent for well over a decade.
So where does Belgium stand?
The reasons why the West opposes secession in Moldova, Bosnia and
elsewhere are geopolitical and ideological. The EU wants to extend its writ deep into
historic Russian territory and that is why it is not prepared to see Moldova divided.
In the case of Bosnia, that artificial state was elevated, during the Yugoslav war, to an
icon of multiculturalism (even though Yugoslavia itself had of course been a multi‐
ethnic state, as Serbia is today).
In my view, Europe will oppose the break‐up of Belgium for the same
reasons.
Of course 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, as well as than the more recently created states
Slovakia, Slovenia, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Bosnia‐Herzegovina, Croatia,
Macedonia, Cyprus, Malta ‐ and obviously Luxembourg.
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, an artificial state being held together as a last experiment in multi‐
nationalism. Flanders has exactly the same historic basis for a claim to independence
as Slovakia, Cyprus or Croatia (and, as I say, it is bigger than all three states). The
English often joke and say “Name ten famous Belgians” and the list usually peters
out after the fictional characters Tintin and Hercule Poirot. But it is obvious that you
would have difficulty keeping the list to ten if you were asked to name famous
Flemings ‐ Rubens, Van Eyck, Memling and Hieronymous Bosch, for starters.
Compare this to the thin or non‐existent historical background of Estonia or Slovenia.
The reason why the break‐up of Belgium will be opposed by Europe is that it
will not serve the cause of European integration. With the partial exception of
Czechoslovakia, the break‐up of multi‐ethnic states in Eastern Europe has helped
Europe integration – on the basis of “divide and rule”. Small bogus states with no
real political existence provide good “lobby fodder” in the Council of Ministers –
they take the EU’s money and vote how they are told. It is obvious that very few of
the secessions in Europe since 1991 have occurred as a result of a desire for real
independence, or else the new states would not immediately have joined the EU and
NATO. You can see this very clearly in the case of Montenegro, which will apply to
join the EU within less than two years after becoming independent. Having adopted
the euro in 2002, Montenegro has just signed a “Stabilisation Agreement” with the
European Union. This Stabilisation Agreement is itself 680 pages long ‐ quite a lot of
legislation for a country of barely 600,000 people (Montenegro is just one and half
times the size of the city of Antwerp) but of course nothing in comparison to the
80,000 pages of primary EU legislation which Montenegro will have to adopt when it
joins the EU, which it hopes to do very soon.
On the contrary, 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. The larger nations of Europe do not understand this because
they are relatively influential within the EU and because the prominence of their
national political life obscures the fact that they are, in fact, governed by the EU,
which is a totally undemocratic and even anti‐democratic organisation.
There is not time in a short speech to rehearse the arguments about why the
EU is undemocratic. Everyone knows that the main 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 (two founder member states of the EU) 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. The
EU is of course based on the historic reconciliation between the old countries of the
original Holy Roman Empire – France, Germany, Italy and the Low Countries. The
specifically Franco‐German aspect of this reconciliation is mirrored in microcosm in
the coexistence of the Flemings and Walloons within Belgium. Many Belgian leaders
including the late King Baudoin indeed said that the EU was a sort of Greater
Belgium. The collapse of the Belgian model would be an event of immense
significance and would, in my view, deliver a further blow to the already faltering
project of European integration.
It would be essential, in my view, that an independent Flanders do not,
therefore, immediately apply to re‐join the EU, but that instead it negotiate its own
terms of association, confining the ultimate deal to the obvious things which people
like about the EU – free travel without passports, freedom of trade – and refusing to
sign up to any of the EU treaties themselves. All of these treaties, starting with the
Treaty of Rome, provide for the vast majority of legislative power to be transferred to
the EU. All new member states have to adopt the totality of the so‐called acquis
communautaire (more than 80,000 pages of primary legislation) and therefore any
state which signs such a treaty is no longer independent in any real sense. Of course
the centralisation of power will increase only further with the reform treaty, in which
states will lose further powers including over immigration. That treaty, indeed,
contains a “enabling clause” which allows the EU to increase its own powers
indefinitely and so further centralisation is inevitable.
There is therefore no point Flanders being independent of Belgium if it is not
independent of the EU too, for otherwise it would only exchange the rule of Brussels
for the rule of Brussels. The “Europe of the regions” model is a trap which would
only make Flanders into a sort of Wallonia, the recipient of EU aid in return for
political compliance in everything.
There are plenty of precedents in Europe for such a free association with the
EU. For free travel, Norway and Iceland (neither of which belongs to the EU) both
belong to the Schengen system which allows free travel without passports.
Switzerland has signed extensive bilateral trade treaties with the EU which do not
compromise its national sovereignty. As far as the currency is concerned, there are
countries which belong to the EU which do not use the euro (the UK, Denmark and
Sweden, plus the new member states except Slovenia which adopted it this year) and
there are non‐EU states which do, like Montenegro.
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. Flanders, indeed, could show the way for other countries whose
people would also like to leave the EU. For that reason, I wish you all success.
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