THE KING, FOOTBALL AND SEVERAL SORTS OF BEER

It has been a great honour for me to lead this country. I have done everything that I could and take personal responsibility for my party's defeat," Guy Verhofstadt, 54, said when leaving his post as prime minister of Belgium and submitting his resignation request to King Albert II. He was forced to resign as a result of the 10 June elections in which Belgium's ruling coalition of Liberals and Socialists suffered a crushing defeat. The Christian Democrats, who had been in power in Belgium since 1830, took revenge for their eight years in opposition and won the elections to Belgium's federal parliament. The opposition Flemish Christian Democratic Party, led by the 45-year-old prime minister of Flanders, Yves Leterme, took 40 seats in the federal parliament (30 of them in Flanders) and won the right to form the new government. Flanders is the northern, Dutch-speaking part of the country, the most densely populated part of Belgium where 60 per cent of the population of 10.5 million live. Success in this region determines the leader of the parliamentary elections in the country, as under the constitution the prime minister is the leader of the party that wins in Flanders. 

The far-right Flemish Interests party came second in Flanders (17 seats in parliament). Outgoing Prime Minister Guy Verhofstadt's Flemish Liberal Democrats gained 18.5 per cent of votes, losing around six percentage points in comparison with the results of the May 2003 parliamentary elections, and took just third place. The Liberals won 41 seats across the country in the 150-seat parliament, losing eight mandates. Their coalition partners, the Socialists, lost 14 mandates, winning 34 seats in the new parliament. In the second most populous region of Belgium, Wallonia, (the southern, Francophone part of the country) the Reform Movement led by Didier Reynders, won with 22 seats in the House of Representatives. The Socialists won 21 seats in the House of Representatives, for the first time failing to hold on to their ruling position in this region. More than 7.7 million Belgians voted for 150 deputies to the House of Representatives and 40 members of the Senate.

The ruling coalition of Liberals and Socialists lost the power that they had held since 2003. Belgian newspaper Le Soir described their electoral defeat as the "Socialists' Waterloo". It is worth looking at the peculiarities of the country's political structure in order to understand properly the results of the Belgian elections. The political system in 10-million-strong Belgium is determined by the existence of two major language communities in the country: the Flemish and the Walloons. The Dutch-speaking Flemish live in Flanders in the north of the country and make up 60 per cent of the population, as was noted earlier, while in Wallonia further south they mainly speak French. Therefore any major Belgian party consists of two almost independent divisions - the Flemish and the Walloon. A difference in political positions is superimposed on the language differences. Supporters of the country's integration have dominated Belgian politics in recent years and their recognized leader was Prime Minister Verhofstadt. The Liberal Socialist coalition governed the country for eight years and showed good results in local and state-wide elections. However, as the figures given above show, the results of the latest elections were lamentable for the coalition - either the public are tired of the prime minister or his domestic and foreign policy was not convincing enough.

The secret of the Christian Democrats' success is simple: they support the development of Flemish and Walloon autonomies. During the election campaign Yves Leterme said: "The existence of a united Belgium is an accident of history. Flanders and Wallonia need independence from the federal centre." These calls strike a chord with the Flemish who think that economically developed Flanders maintains Wallonia, which is lagging behind. However, his election victory does not mean that Yves Leterme will be able to implement his ambitious project easily - the new premier still has to form a governing coalition. The right-wing conservatives from the Flemish Interests party, who won 17 seats, are his ideological allies. But an alliance with the extreme right could damage Mr Leterme's reputation. London's Financial Times says that almost all political parties rule out the possibility of entering a coalition with the party. It could take one to two months for the government to be formed. Once the government is formed and has taken its oath to King Albert II, Mr Leterme intends to begin a package of reforms. The key plank of his project is to be tax reform, which will redistribute revenue in favour of local budgets.

The modern Kingdom of Belgium is an example of how during the process of devolution (the gradual delegation of powers from the centre to the regions) the threat of the collapse of what appeared to be a well-established state can emerge. While separatism in Spain is mainly ethnic, in Scotland has its roots in history and in Northern Ireland arose on denominational grounds, some experts consider Belgian separatism to be economic and linguistic. A senior member of staff at the Russian Academy of Sciences' Europe Institute, Vladimir Shveytser, thinks that the once unitary state of Dutch-speaking Flanders and French-speaking Wallonia is gradually evolving towards a system which can be described as unstable federalism. Constitutional boundary reform in the 1980s and 1990s created three autonomous regions: Wallonia, Flanders and the capital Brussels. The capital is in Flanders but 80 per cent of its population is French-speaking so this is a mixed autonomy. 

The Russian academic thinks that that structural reform of the national economy, under way in recent decades, is the reason for the changes. Flanders is the engine of the economy which reinforces the position of the Flemish in political life too. Prime ministers, regardless of their party affiliation, are exclusively Flemish. 

They also have the absolute majority in the reformed structures of the executive and legislative authorities. The budget is a stumbling block in the conflict between the two communities in which economically flourishing Flanders' share far outstrips the contribution of crisis-ridden Wallonia. Right-wing and ultra-right Flemish politicians use this to call for an end to the financing of the "Walloon parasites". The traditional bilingualism and economic imbalance created fertile ground for the emergence of radical nationalist parties in Flanders, the Flemish Bloc. Its success (around 12-15 per cent of votes in nationwide parliamentary elections in the past 10 years) in 25 years changed the party from a political marginal to an important part of the Belgian establishment. The party has a stronger position in the Flemish parliament and municipal councils in the Flemish part of the country.

Anti-Wallonianism is not the only characteristic of the radical wing of Flemish separatists, Vladimir Shveytser says. It also demands the formation of an independent Flemish state republic. At one time they insisted on the dissolution of the monarchy, which other Flemish politicians would not do. A legal ban was placed on the Flemish Bloc in 2004, not for its anti-state propaganda, but for its racist attacks. Xenophobic separatism had become the bloc's political brand - it was calling for a halt to the flow of foreign labour into Belgium. The separatists thought that immigration not only deprived native Belgians of jobs, but created an increase in crime in the country and promoted the spread of customs and morals alien to Europeans. Belgian justice formally destroyed the bastion of radical separatism but could not prevent its successful return with the appearance of the Flemish Interests party, committed to the same rhetoric and with the same leaders. As a result Belgian society is constantly subject to the ideological effect of the xenophobic separatists and is internally prepared for the further disintegration of the state. Further evidence of this was provided by a report on a Belgian TV channel at the end of 2006 that Belgium had already allegedly collapsed. Not only many ordinary citizens, but also some representatives of the Belgian establishment believed this canard. It is still difficult to say whether this bad joke contains a grain of truth.

The results of the elections showed the deepening division between the Walloons and Flemish, which could lead to serious changes in Belgium's state structure. If the new premier pursues his manifesto, this could create the prerequisites for the collapse of the single Belgian state or its rebirth as a purely nominal political union. However, many experts think that this process has already begun because of European integration. Many Belgians already see Brussels not as the capital of their country, but as the centre of a united Europe. Yves Leterme himself has expressed this view in broad terms: "Belgians have nothing left in common except the king, football and some sorts of beer."