A quote from Gregory Rodriguez in The Los Angeles Times, 17 September 2007

Belgium, it seems, not only shares its capital, Brussels, with the European Union, it also serves as the latter's model. Three short years ago, a United Nations report on "cultural liberty" glibly offered multiethnic Belgium as proof that countries don't have to "choose between national unity and cultural diversity." But it may have spoken too soon. […]

Right-wing Europeans like to pretend that multiculturalism was born with the arrival of large numbers of Muslim immigrants in the last quarter of the 20th century, but Belgium was a multicultural state long before that. […] Because it was designed to protect the rights of the country's three linguistic groups – the Flemish make up roughly 60% of the population, French speakers 40% and Germans less than 1% – the political system can best be described as an anti-majoritarian democracy in which power is balanced by proportional ethnic representation, executive power sharing and minority vetoes. […]

Social interaction between the nation's two largest groups is disappointingly low. So is intermarriage. People not only vote in separate elections, they watch separate television networks and read separate newspapers. Linguistic segregation in schools is also pretty thorough. In Wallonia, for example, only 17% speak passable Dutch in addition to French.

So what has kept this consummately postmodern – or is it post-national – country together thus far? The monarchy. But so far during this political crisis, King Albert II's repeated calls for unity have gone unheeded.

Yet while some Belgians deplore what one Flemish philosopher [Lode Claes] disdainfully called Belgium's "identity of non-identity," others embrace it.

Nine years ago, a group of so-called Neo Belgicist intellectuals and artists published an open letter in which they affirmed their opposition to the existence of a single, solid national identity. Precisely because a national identity is nothing to be proud of, they argued, they are proud to be Belgians. In fact, they proclaimed Belgium to be the "antidote to nationalism." And better yet, because it signifies so little, the Belgian state can easily be replaced by a new and broader "non-identity concept" of Europeanness.

But if model little Belgium collapses under the weight of ethnic tensions, what makes them think that the giant European Union will not suffer a similar fate?

A Throne in Brussels Author: Paul Belien ASIN: 184540033X