Cheers for the link John - definitely makes interesting reading!

Brussels is definitely they thorniest issue should there be a split. For a start, it's increasingly Francophone suburbs would be the most likely flash-point of any violence to protest a unilateral split by Flanders. As a part of Belgium, many of the border towns along the Flemish/Wallonian border are officially bi-lingual - in an independent Flanders I imagine the dictate would come down from on high that Flanders only has one official language, and it won't be French! That would generate some serious animosity around these parts.

Brussels is an even thornier issue though because, historically, it was a Flemish city, and not just any Flemish city, but the proverbial jewel in the Flemish crown. Today, it's officially bilingual, but reality is different. I would wager there is more English spoken in Brussels now than Flemish!

I'd be inclined to image that an 'if we can't have it neither can you' mentality would set in, so handing Brussels over to the EU to become a sort of Washington DC could be one way out. It's a proposal I've heard bandied about a few times by Flemish nationalists.

The NV-A's analogy of Belgium being eroded away by the EU is the most sensible. It would be so much bother to set up a Flemish army etc., but if Belgian remains as a looser and looser federation while the EU takes over more and more national sovereignty, then eventually, Flanders will just be a state within the EU, and Belgium will be irrelevant. Even the most extreme Flemish nationalists that I've spoken to don't want a fully independent nation state, they want an independent Flanders within a united Europe. Really, they just want the Wallonians to stop bossing them around, and for the Frenchification of Flanders to be halted in it's tracks, and, ideally reversed. The older generation will remind you that once Flanders spread down into modern-day France, and that Lille was once the Flemish city of Rijsel.

All in all - I have to wonder whether or not the British did Europe a favour when they dreamt up Belgium and forced it onto the continent!

Bart.