LL-L "Language politics" 2009.04.26 (01) [E]

[Lowlands-L List]

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L O W L A N D S - L - 26 April 2009 - Volume 01
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From: Roger Thijs, Euro-Support, Inc. <roger.thijs at euro-support.be>
Subject: LL-L Language Politics

We will have regional and European elections in June *(eventually also
federal elections, but the federal government is momentarily that immobile
that is even too inactive to fall and get itself renewed after new
elections).*

There are some open issues. The constitutional court had some objectives
against the election district *BHV Brussels-Halle-Vilvoorde*, and this BHV
combines the bilingual capital region Brussels with the Flemish ring around
it called Halle-Vilvoorde.
I live in Steenokkerzeel, which belongs to Halle-Vilvoorde. Since BHV is not
split, we will have the choice for the European elections to choose between
Flemish and Walloon candidates. This is apparently inconstitutional since it
gives us an advantage that other regions do not have.

>From the Flemish side one thinks that a split will make the borderline
clearer and helps to stop the expansion of the Brussels stain.
>From the French (Wallonia+majority-Brussels) side, one wants to protect
French speakers in the Flemish area around Brussels.
*Flemish* speakers behave generally *bilingual *Dutch-French,
*French*speakers emigrating in the Flemish municipalties around
Brussels stick
generally to French speaking, making French the only possible language of
communication and *converts the occupied area to French-only* after a couple
of generations. The Council of Europe has more sympathy for the *individual
rights of the French immigrants turning things in their advantage* than for
the Flemish trying to *protect their culture teritorialwise*.
(*This is the reverse side of the European Treaty for minorities: If the
Russians migrate to Hamburg they eventually may claim to get all services
done in Russian, and if they grow sufficiently as a group and refuse to
speak anything else than Russian, they may get as a result that "all"
inhabitants have to convert to Russian for business reasons)*

Many municipalities of the Halle-Vilvoorde refuse to organize the elections.
That will not change very much, since the province of Flemish-Brabant will
take over the organization.
An example of other actions in my municipality:
http://www.euro-support.be/tmp/ste/letter.jpg  (*)
http://www.euro-support.be/tmp/ste/sticker.jpg  (*)
The municipality is distributing stickers to the population for them to fix
on their mailboxes and keeping out election publicity in French.
More symbolic, but what I think is dangerous: it pushes people to show their
political preferences to the outside.

(*) *webpages hosted by the scarlet.be server in Belgium are momentarily
difficult to retrieve, due to problems with the scarlet server.*

Regards,
Roger

•

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