I knew that there had been a few problems in Belgium recently (three months after the General Election, still no government), but I've got to admit the extent of the present division between the Flemish and Walloon parts of the country took me by surprise. The Economist, for example, is advising a Velvet Divorce (a la Czechslovakia over a decade ago)and other publications are now in the act, none of them foreseeing much of a future for the unified state.
The split up of Belgium, of course, would be a great encouragement for our own home-grown separatists; but, of course again, each situation is different and I think the SNP, Plaid Cymru,Sinn Fein/DUP would have a harder struggle convincing the electorate in their various parts of the nation to split off from the bigger whole. Still, it's interesting to ponder how much the EU's concentration on regional as opposed to national development has led to this increase in ethnic, as opposed to national identity in other parts of Europe.
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