November 24, 1991 went down in Belgian history as Black Sunday. That day, a little-known far-right party, Vlaams Blok, swept the voters in the north of the country with its anti-immigration and pro-independence speech for Flanders. Shocked, the rest of the formations agreed to keep them out of any government coalition through a sanitary cordon that for more than thirty years has prevented the far-right from coming to power. This has been his greatest success. The worst flaw, not having stopped its growth.
On June 9, Belgium holds federal and regional elections, as well as European ones, and Vlaams Belang – as it was renamed after the original formation was outlawed in 2004 due to racism – is likely to achieve the best result in its history . Polls predict it could jump from the 19% of the vote it had in Flanders in 2019 to almost 30%, making it the most powerful party in the rich Dutch-speaking region thanks to the fall of Bart’s N-VA de Wever and Jan Jambon, the allies of Carles Puigdemont in Europe. Together they could have a majority in the Flemish Parliament, an unprecedented situation that causes cold sweats in the south of the country and raises a few questions.
The first: will the sanitary cordon in Flanders disappear? “This is what these elections are fundamentally about,” says political scientist Nicolas Bouteca, assistant professor at the University of Ghent. “It is difficult to predict, but there is no doubt that there have never been as many possibilities as now. A part of the N-VA is open to this and there can be a lot of pressure to carry it out.” The fact that the goal of both parties is the independence of Flanders adds an extra degree of tension to the debate, but it should not be lost sight of, he points out, that the strategies to achieve it are very different.
“Vlaams Belang is a supporter of the Catalan way. What he proposes is to declare independence from the Parliament of Flanders”, explains Bouteca. On the other hand, the N-VA, despite its support for Puigdemont, defends the negotiation and rather aspires to transform Belgium into a confederal state. “They are a conservative party and, as such, do not like revolutions. They do not believe that that strategy, as seen in Catalonia, should work. They advocate negotiating with francophones in the federal Parliament to obtain more autonomy. They don’t think it can be achieved in any other way.”
“The Flemish have less love for Belgium than a fear of adventure,” agrees Stefaan Walgrave, professor of Politics at the University of Antwerp. But Belgian politics is a complicated game of balances and, depending on the exact result of June 9, the N-VA may face a “devilish dilemma”, he says, about how to make the independence dream come true: “Being part of the next federal government and negotiating a state reform, so they should not agree with Vlaams Belang in Flanders? Or sign up to the confrontational strategy of the Vlaams Belang?”.
De Wever has warned that, if his party is not included in the federal government this time either, an alliance with the far-right in Flanders could be considered. But, even if they form part of the next coalition, in reality, there is little chance of agreeing on the major reform of the State that the N-VA is asking for, which will increase the pressure in favor of agreeing with Vlaams Belang. “There’s a part of the N-VA that feels like it’s now or never,” adds Walgrave
On a Belgian scale, there is no doubt that the cordon will remain and Vlaams Belang will not be part of the next federal government. On principle and because no French-speaking party is in favor of the division of Belgium. Also, while Flanders has only turned right, both Wallonia and Brussels are going left. In the south, the Socialist Party must defend its traditional hegemony against the Marxist-oriented PTB.
They call it “the Belgian paradox”: Flanders and Wallonia are independent political spheres to such an extent that the far right in French-speaking Belgium is non-existent. This situation is no consolation for Nina Henkens, coordinator of the anti-racism platform Kif Kif. The social reaction to the rise of the ultra-right is “not at all” like what has been seen recently in Germany, he laments. “The far right is very normalized in Flanders. The problem is that other political parties take part of his ideas and his extremist speech”, especially on immigration, and “the media treat the Vlaams Belang as if it were just another party. That’s why there is so little opposition to fascism.”
Justice does not lower its guard. A judge has just sentenced a former Vlaams Belang MP, Dries Van Langenhove, to a year in prison for violating the law on racism and denialism, the same law that outlawed the original party. He had founded a far-right youth association, Schild
