The future of Brussels set to become a theme in 2014 election campaigns

“The French-speakers’ love for this country comes through their stomachs. They’re just after as much money as possible for as long as possible and they want Brussels, too. Their love for Belgium doesn’t stretch further.” That’s how N-VA president Bart De Wever expressed his opinion about the French-speaking parties  on the VRT broadcaster’s weekly debating programme ‘De zevende dag’. De Wever lashed out at his French-speaking parties and their paradoxical stance. They attack his party for its calls for confederalism while at the same time they prepare themselves for a campaign on the theme, he believes. Something is undoubtedly brewing south of the language frontier. It is no coincidence that the French-speaking liberals of the MR party and the French-speaking socialists PS have positioned their top ministers Didier Reynders and Laurette Onkelinx at the head of the Brussels division in view of the upcoming federal  and regional elections in 2014. During an interview with the newspaper Le Soir, Onkelinx made it quite clear that the elections would basically evolve around “the unity of Belgium and the situation in Brussels in particular”, while expressing her belief that the French should be more firmly embedded in the capital. She is set on positive relations between the French-speakers and the Flemish, but it should be based on mutual respect, she says. She wants to strengthen the identity of Brussels, but rejects the N-VA’s proposal of confederalism. Her idea of “It’s either Brussels as a whole or it’s nothing” is diametrically opposed to the N-VA’s vision, with De Wever stressing that “Brussels will not go to the French-speakers“ and adding that “It will always be a shared city, with the different communities each playing their role”.
The N-VA and PS are not the only two parties that are warming up for the upcoming election campaign. In their New Year’s addresses, the future Belgian state structure was the central theme of the Flemish People’s Movement Vlaamse Volksbeweging, the Flemish anti-immigration party Vlaams Belang and the socialist SP.A. The Flemish People’s Movement urged the Flemish N-VA, Open Vld and CD&V parties to clarify their concept of confederalism, while Vlaams Belang tabled a plan for an independent Flanders with Brussels as its only bilingual city. Meanwhile the minister-president of the Flemish government Kris Peeters CD&V recently mentioned that a new round of state reform was not a necessity after the elections of 2014. De Wever was not happy with this statement, seeing it as a sign of Flanders throwing in the towel 18 months before the fact. In his speech during his party’s New Year’s reception SP.A president Bruno Tobback compared conferderalism with the all-purpose tiger balm used in medicine, saying: “It seems to provide relief for all kinds of ailments, even though nobody can say exactly why it works or what it contains.” On a more serious note he believes fiscal reforms and changes in the labour market are essential.