The Wall Street Journal Europe editorialises (subs. req'd) about the election in Belgium ("The Accidental Country") --
Mr. Leterme [incoming PM] proposes to address the main source of tensions. About six million Flemish subsidize four million Walloons with billions of euros a year through transfer payments. Such generosity could exhaust a homogenous society, let alone a linguistically riven one like Belgium.
This would be the same Wall Street Journal which thinks that tinkering with federal-type arrangements, as in an oil law that would see oil-rich areas subsidise the others, can help hold together a non-exhausted Iraq -- a place that unlike Belgium, does not have the advantage of prosperity and peace. The Journal concludes --
Difficulties aside, Belgium is a useful test case for other multiethnic European nation-states with similar problems.
And indeed a test case for any project aiming at holding multiethnic societies together even under the most favourable circumstances.
No comments:
Post a Comment