
Belgium is slowly unravelling, like a Yugoslavia in slow motion. The supranational country is in a situation of political limbo since the elections of June 10, 2007. Belgium, which is often described as a miniature version of the European Union with which it shares its capital, is made up of Dutch-speaking Flanders in the north and French-speaking Wallonia in the south. Politicians in Wallonia are preparing for the moment when Flanders secedes from Belgium. Some Flemings fear that French-speaking extremists are planning to take over the Flemish towns surrounding Brussels by force.
Since its conception in 1830-31 when Walloon and French revolutionaries tore the country away from the Netherlands, its French-speaking minority has dominated the Dutch-speaking majority, which was denied higher education in its own language until the 1930s. As a result the linguistic frontier gradually shifted northwards, as historically Dutch-speaking towns and villages, such as Waterloo, were annexed by Wallonia, and as Belgium’s capital, Brussels, originally a Dutch town, developed into a bilingual enclave within Flanders.