Bickering Belgians Find a Point of Unity in Toughening Borders

[Harold F. Schiffman]

October 10, 2007

Bickering Belgians Find a Point of Unity in Toughening Borders

By DAN BILEFSKY

BRUSSELS, Oct. 9 This 177-year-old nation came a step closer on Tuesday to
averting breakup after its squabbling linguistic communities managed to
agree on the one issue that increasingly unites them: fear of immigrants.
Belgium, divided between Dutch-speaking Flanders in the north and
French-speaking Wallonia in the south, has spent 120 days since national
elections without a new government. Political parties have been unable to
agree on the countrys direction, and fears are growing that Belgium will
dissolve. Yet signs of a breakthrough in the talks emerged Tuesday morning
when the Christian Democrats and Liberals temporarily put aside their
differences and agreed on a tough new approach to asylum policy and
economic migration.

Political analysts stressed that the crisis was far from over with the
important issue of how to grant more autonomy to Flanders and Wallonia
still hanging in the balance. They underlined, however, that the deal
illustrated how immigration had become a unifying issue in the country. A
toughening stance on immigration has overtaken politics in Belgium and
made immigration a swing issue, and we are seeing this across Europe, said
Pierre Blaise, secretary general of Crisp, a sociopolitical research
organization in Brussels.

Under the agreement, which will only come into effect if parties form a
government, migrants from outside the European Union will be able to come
to fill jobs only if there are not enough Union candidates. Belgian
citizenship would only go to those who have spent five years uninterrupted
in the country and who speak one of its three languages French, Dutch or
German.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/10/world/europe/10belgium.html?ref=world

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