{"id":391,"date":"2007-06-12T22:26:00","date_gmt":"2007-06-12T21:26:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.widmann.org.uk\/?p=391"},"modified":"2007-06-12T22:26:00","modified_gmt":"2007-06-12T21:26:00","slug":"the-end-of-belgium","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/widmanniana.org\/blog\/the-end-of-belgium\/","title":{"rendered":"The end of Belgium?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a onblur=\"try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}\" href=\"https:\/\/widmanniana.org\/blog\/uploaded_images\/nobelgium3-752205.png\"><img decoding=\"async\" style=\"float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;\" src=\"https:\/\/widmanniana.org\/blog\/uploaded_images\/nobelgium3-752202.png\" border=\"0\" alt=\"\" \/><\/a>The <a href=\"http:\/\/www.thenews.com.pk\/daily_detail.asp?id=60233\">results of the elections in Belgium<\/a> might end up with more autonomy for Flanders.<\/p>\n<p>Although I don&#8217;t think there&#8217;s any chance of Belgium falling apart just yet, I do wonder whether that will be the eventual outcome &ndash; I doubt the <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Flemish_movement\">Flemish movement<\/a> will be happy longterm with anything less than independence.<\/p>\n<p>It seems from what I&#8217;ve seen on Wikipedia that the extremists in both Flanders and Wallonia would rather like joining their part of the country with the Netherlands and France, respectively.  I doubt it&#8217;s very likely, but it would be an interesting prospect.<\/p>\n<p>Apart from that, I wonder what would happen to Brussels.  It&#8217;s situated within Flanders, and the Flemish nationalists claim it as theirs, but it&#8217;s mainly French-speaking, so it would not be a happy bunny as part of independent Flanders (or of the Netherlands).<\/p>\n<p>Personally, I think Brussels should become a federal district of the EU, in the same manner as for instance Washington DC.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The results of the elections in Belgium might end up with more autonomy for Flanders. Although I don&#8217;t think there&#8217;s any chance of Belgium falling apart just yet, I do wonder whether that will be the eventual outcome &ndash; I doubt the Flemish movement will be happy longterm with anything less than independence. It seems from what I&#8217;ve seen on Wikipedia that the extremists in both Flanders and Wallonia would rather like joining their part of the country with the Netherlands and France, respectively. I doubt it&#8217;s [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[101,159,130],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-391","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-election","category-en","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/widmanniana.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/391","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/widmanniana.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/widmanniana.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/widmanniana.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/widmanniana.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=391"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/widmanniana.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/391\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/widmanniana.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=391"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/widmanniana.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=391"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/widmanniana.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=391"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}