Belgian voters turn attention inwards

Date: 10/06/1999

As Belgium prepares to go to the polls this weekend to elect both national and European representatives, the country is beset by problems ranging from the chicken feed scare to linguistic conflict. Simon Coss reports

BELGIUM is in a flap again. But for once the issue which has one of the Union's six founder members up in arms is not the interminable spats between the country's French and Dutch-speaking communities.

This time it is really serious. This time it is about food and, if there is one thing that unites all citizens of the divided kingdom, it is their devotion to eating and drinking the finest fare available.

Last week saw the resignation of Agriculture Minister Karel Pinxten and Marcel Colla, his counterpart at the health ministry, over a scandal surrounding the contamination of the country's chickens and eggs with the dangerous carcinogen, dioxin.

The poultry was apparently fed the dioxin in a batch of feed which contained both fuel and vegetable oils. In a bid to prevent any risk to human health, the government ordered the immediate destruction of chickens and eggs throughout the country. Late last week, the European Commission extended the curbs on trade in the affected products to pork, beef and dairy products.

The food scare could not have come at a worst time for Belgian Premier Jean-Luc Dehaene, erupting just two weeks before the country goes to the polls to elect a new government on Sunday (13 June). The crisis also appears to have had a negative effect on campaigning in Belgium for the European Parliament elections, which take place on the same day.

In a country so obsessed with its own internal squabbles, it was never going to be easy to try to raise people's interest in wider, more 'noble' issues such as the future of the grand European project. And now that Belgians feel their fundamental right to eat well is under threat, the EU has all but been forced off of the political agenda, despite the key role it is playing in the damage limitation exercise now under way.

All of the country's main newspapers have, understandably, concentrated on the chicken crisis over the past fortnight. Most have portrayed it as the latest in a long line of political scandals and cover-ups which have plagued the country in recent years, and have devoted many column inches to assessing how Dehaene and his ruling coalition are likely to fare in the national poll as a result.

To be fair, any EU citizens faced with the sorts of domestic political problems confronting Belgium would be unlikely to pay too much attention to elections to a European institution still widely considered to be rather out of touch and ineffectual.

The past three years have seen key figures in the country's twin Socialist parties, including former NATO Secretary-General Willy Claes, found guilty in a multi-million-euro scandal involving suspect defence contracts. National and regional police forces have come under fire for alleged incompetence in their investigations into a notorious paedophile ring, and then for permitting the escape - albeit for only a few hours - of Marc Dutroux, the country's most wanted man, after they had finally apprehended him.

Belgium's public services are perceived as overstaffed, weak and inefficient; and in Dutch-speaking Flanders, the extreme-right Vlaams Blok Party has almost 15&percent; of the vote.

Despite this surfeit of national preoccupations, it is still possible that there will be a fair turnout for Sunday's Euro-elections - but not because of any innate sense of 'Europeanism'. Voting is compulsory, and people across the country will be turning out to take part in the national poll anyway.

There are, however, some Belgians - particularly members of the political class - who are fervently committed to the European ideal. Like their neighbours in Luxembourg and the Netherlands, many see the Union as a way of increasing small countries' political influence and getting better value for their francs.

Membership of the Union is never questioned and the doubts expressed about joining the single currency area concerned the ability of a four-party government, including Socialists, to meet the euro zone's public debt criteria. Even now, Belgium's public debt is worth more than 110&percent; of the total output of its economy.

Sales of state assets, such as almost half of phone operator Belgacom and airline Sabena, have been grudging. Privatisations have been aimed more at raising funds to pay off public debt than to introduce market efficiencies into what were effectively state administrations.

The overhaul of Belgium's economy over the past decade has been largely EU-led. Belgacom and Sabena had to be saved from oblivion as European aviation liberalisation loomed in 1997 and telecoms market opening in 1998, while turning a snowballing budget deficit into a steady primary surplus only won across-the-board support when it spelled the difference between euro-zone membership and outer darkness.

By contrast, home-grown radicalism fails. At the last election in 1995, the scandal-hit Flemish Socialist Party cheated political death by campaigning in defence of the country's generous federal welfare system against plans for an overhaul drawn up by the Liberal VLD.

The VLD has the same problem in this election. Herman de Croo, a senior figure in the party, last week launched a programme centred on full-scale privatisations of Belgacom, the post office and the railways - radical, money-spinning, efficient and doomed to failure.

The European Communities have performed a similar feat for Belgium's longer-standing problem: old and bitter divisions between the country's two linguistic communities.

At best, relations between politicians representing each 'side' are bad-tempered and begrudging - with the result that many laws passed in the country are based on messy compromises which one observer described as “looking more like a Picasso than a Rubens”.

For many political leaders, the EU can save them from themselves. José Happart, an outgoing Socialist MEP who caused no end of trouble as mayor of Fourons (a tiny Francophone corner of Flanders), argues that the way forward for his country is to move power away from central government. Instead, he insists, it should reside with the Union's institutions on the one hand and regional authorities on the other.

” I would like to see the creation of a citizen's Europe through the creation of a Europe of the regions,” he explains. “We cannot build a Europe of nation states. We need a central European state to harmonise laws and taxes. After that, it is the regions that become key players.”

Happart argues that such an approach would allow French and Dutch-speaking Belgians to be governed by their respective communities.

But critics say what the Francophone Socialist, who is a candidate for the Belgian senate in the elections, is effectively calling for the break-up of the Belgian state. “For certain people, Europe could be used as a means to such an end,” says Flemish local government officer Armel Wynants.

The phased transformation of Belgium into a federal state comprising Flanders, Wallonia and the Brussels region was seen by many as a first step towards a break-up, while others were convinced it was the only way to save the 169-year-old state.

This is objective number one for Belgium's political élite, personified by fixer-turned-Premier Dehaene. Like Luxembourg, Belgium has long punched well above its weight on the EU stage.

Dehaene - a man who, but for the grace of former UK Prime Minister John Major, would have been president of the European Commission for the last five years - is the latest in a long line of EU-level 'players' including Etienne Davignon, Philippe Maystadt, Wilfried Martens, Leo Tindemans, Mark Eyskens and Paul-Henri Spaak. Flemish, Walloon or Brussels Capital Region ministers could never hope to have the same clout.