Obama could have been anywhere. Speaking to a group of Belgian businessmen this year, President Barack Obama warned of the dangers of artificial intelligence, climate change and geopolitical conflict. But there were issues closer to home: Belgium is in an election year, and Brussels, home to Europe’s most sacred institutions, has weathered a year of geopolitical shocks. But Obama didn’t take questions about domestic politics. A visit to the Magritte Museum and the king was all that was on Obama’s agenda.
The hesitation is understandable. In what is being called the biggest election year in human history, with roughly half the planet going to the polls, Belgium has remained a rather low-profile presence. The country’s politics are colorful and frighteningly complex. Foreigners tend to feel bewildered by a country with roughly the same population as the capital, Paris, and six governments across three regions and three languages. On June 9, Belgians go to the polls, including for the European Parliament, and anyone worried about the fate of the continent should be paying attention.
Belgium, for all its idiosyncrasies, tells a typical European story: the far right is rising to power against a backdrop of declining public services, a precarious labour market, weakening traditional parties and intractable regional divisions. In Brussels, home to the European Union, rising crime, pollution and aging infrastructure are emblematic of a continent in decline. Belgium shows with rare clarity that 21st-century Europe has become a continent driven by history, rather than a continent that drives it.
In a European context of decline, Belgian politics also exhibits a curious feature: Trade union density has remained stable at around 50% for the past decade and Belgium has an excellent record on inequality and wages. But this has done little to stem the politics of resentment within Belgium, especially in the Dutch-speaking north of the country, Flanders.
The far-right party Vlaams Bélange is on the cusp of victory in Belgium, threatening to break through the quarantine cordon that was erected around it decades ago. Though it has a slightly different name, the party was founded in reaction to the lackluster politics of regionalism in the 1970s and relaunched in the 1980s as virulently anti-immigrant. With dogged social activism and careful protection of its grassroots base, it has capitalized on the slow decline of populist parties in Belgium. It is now expected to win almost a third of Flemish-speaking voters, a historically high figure that would establish it as a strong contender to take power at regional level.
In the French-speaking south, the political calculations are markedly different. Geographically, Wallonia has long seemed an ideal breeding ground for right-wing populism. Once a manufacturing heartland, the region has suffered from deindustrialization and population decline since the 1970s. But far-right candidates have failed to emerge, and the Walloon Socialist Party, one of Europe’s most enduring parties, has held onto power through clientelism and deep talent. But its grip on power is weakening; its membership is ageing and it has viable challengers on both the left and right.
And Brussels has its own regional and national governments. The political problem is not the rise of the right, but the stagnation of others. The finances, mainly under the control of the Socialist Party, are in serious shambles. The planned north-south metro line, a major headache for the municipalities, is due to be delayed for 15 years. The liberal Reform Movement, along with the left-wing Workers’ Party and the French-speaking Ecolo Party, probably stand to benefit from the turmoil, but few expect the situation to improve significantly.
One of the world’s most diverse cities, Belgium’s capital epitomizes the country’s contradictory position in the current world system, caught between the region and the world. Belgium has always served as a transit point for great powers, even when its industrial might and colonial subordination rivaled world leaders. At the same time, the country played a key role in the formation of some of the institutions that now dominate European politics, from NATO to the European Union. Its enthusiasm for multilateralism is not surprising: a small economy easily influenced by international pressures knew that it would always have more influence inside the tent than outside it.
But Belgium’s international aspirations went beyond mere opportunism. For a long time, Belgian politicians and citizens had hoped that European integration would free them from their tribal rivalries. What need was there for a complex federal union if the giants in Brussels were to take power immediately? With the exception of the army and the national museum, all other policy instruments could be easily transferred and Belgium could withdraw from national politics.
Upward absorption has not happened. The European Union remains halfway between national governments and a continental suprastate, with no EU army or major financial institutions. This puts Belgium in an awkward position: it has never been able to integrate itself into Europe and remains an unstable federal state with a constantly unclear distribution of tasks.
With the ideological bonds that allowed Belgium to coexist broken, traditional ruling parties are finding it harder to maintain popular support. With voting more divided, Flemish and Walloon voters are now attracted to adventurers of the right and left. For Prime Minister Alexander De Croo, leader of a seven-party coalition government that took almost two years of hard work to put together, it’s not a very attractive prospect.
Belgium provides a stark reminder that there are few bulwarks against the trends plaguing European countries. Unlike Italy or the Netherlands, where the far right is already in power and party democracy and its post-war prosperity are only a dim memory, Belgium’s rise has proven eerily unstoppable, despite low inequality, high union membership and relatively strong party bases.
The fragile equilibrium the country maintained throughout the 2010s has continually surprised observers, but in the 2020s, it seems like nowhere is safe from the challenges of this century.
