What if belgium splits

Who, for example, will pay the huge public debt? The political impasse largely centres on who pays for what. Flanders, the dominant economic power, complains it has to subsidise the economically weak Wallonia and wants more public services decentralised.

Another question: what would happen to Brussels? The headquarters of the European Union is a bilingual region with an 80 percent French-speaking population inside Flanders.

Even the head of the Flemish NVA party, which wants eventual independence for the region, said he could not see a solution. Nobody wants to lose Brussels. The only politician to call for a split so far is Filip Dewinter, head of the far-right Vlaams Belang Flemish Interest. A poll by public broadcaster VRT showed 40 percent of the Flemish -- but only 8 percent of the French-speaking Wallonia region -- want the country to split.

But many people seem underwhelmed by the political impasse, with close to 70 percent saying in a survey in La Derniere Heure that they did not see it as a political crisis. Previous governments have taken as long as six months to form. We are human beings on the face of earth.

But politicians do not understand that. The immediate focus for his party's anger now is the fallout from the parliamentary elections, in which his party came first and the far-right Vlaams Belang movement second, but do not feature in the new government. For him it is an anti-democratic outrage. The new government to which Mr de Roover objects is a seven-party coalition which includes Greens, Socialists and Liberals in a marriage of convenience with Flemish Christian Democrats.

To the protesters I met at a Vlaams Belang rally on the outskirts of Brussels the months of negotiations provided evidence that the Belgian state has simply run its course.

Kelly, a middle-aged man who'd travelled a long way to be there, put it like this: "It's better for Flanders to be independent, because in Flanders the right is winning and in the French-speaking south it's the left. When I asked him how long he thought Belgium would exist he said simply: "As long as the politicians don't listen to the people. This doesn't necessarily mean the idea of Belgian-ness is dead, though. Peter de Roover, for example, could imagine a future in which it remained as a kind of umbrella identity over two essentially independent states of Flanders and Wallonia.

There could be a federal army, he suggested, but not a federal police force. There's certainly a degree of pride in Belgium's national football team, the Red Devils, although several Dutch-speakers we met said they were drawn to supporting the Netherlands team instead.

There are some bridges between the two biggest communities. There's no longer a single national broadcasting service, though separate channels are provided to the different language groups, Dutch, French and German.

The general news agendas of Flanders and Wallonia are also entirely different. When the great French-speaking singer Annie Cordy died recently it was headline news for French-speakers and barely a footnote in Flanders. Joyce Azar points to unifying factors like the national football team and the king, but you do get the feeling she's operating a kind of one-woman air bridge across a widening gap.

More and more the question is real. It might seem extraordinary that in stable, prosperous Western Europe, a real question mark hangs over the future existence of a democratic state. But consider the fate of the opera La Muette de Portici, which fell victim to changing tastes and times and has more or less ended up in the dustbin of history. Who is to say that the country whose revolution it once inspired will not itself one day follow suit? Belgian king meets far-right leader.

Image source, Reuters. After 15 months, Belgium has a new government with as many women as men - but the top two parties are not included. Revolution that started during Brussels opera.