Bart Dirks

Belgium has been around for 193 years, but during most of that time — and never more so than during the constitutional crisis of 2007-2008 — experts have been predicting its imminent demise. Which somehow always fails to happen. Bart Dirks, the Volkskrant’s Brussels correspondent at the time, takes a look at how Belgium works, politically, socially and culturally, and at how far we (meaning Dutch readers) are justified in our prejudices about ribbon development, two-hour lunches, language chaos, corrupt town halls, high food standards, Catholic meddling, the Flemish far-right, beer-brewing monks, Walloon socialists, permanently unfinished building projects and anarchic road traffic.

Although he has clearly had his fair share of frustrating experiences with Belgian inefficiency, Dirks also obviously likes living in Belgium and seems to appreciate the way people interact. Things work through networks and personal connections, it seems, rather than systems and hierarchies. The Dutch way of rushing in and saying what you think is rarely appreciated.

There was a lot of very familiar stuff here: the Dutroux scandal, the Charleroi metro, the useless ship-lift, the reluctance of Flemish nationalists to acknowledge the extent of wartime collaboration with the Nazis, the way neither Dutch-speakers nor French-speakers learn each other’s language or read each other’s books, and so on. But there were also some interesting insights I didn’t know about, like the continuing importance of youth movements (scouting, etc.) in Flemish culture; the decline of the church everywhere except the school system, which they still dominate; the astute way the monarchy under Boudewijn and Albert II captured the middle ground between the two main language groups by playing a mediating role in the political system; the way the tiny German-speaking minority has profited from successive constitutional reforms to establish a government structure worthy of a minor nation state…

Fifteen years out of date, of course, but quite fun.… (meer)