That is not the half of it
The Germans are along for the ride this time. Unless you go to the East cantons, you will not hear a word of German out of anyone in official capacity. For the rest, it is a now almost absolute refusal to cooperate with the other side that is driving things (sounds familiar?). For some time, nothing moved without tit-for-tat compensation and now, things are almost completely stuck.
Brussels is a mostly French speaking blob squarely inside Flanders. Officially bilingual, on the ground it is hard to find enough qualified Flemish speakers to fill certain positions. That leaves both the local police force and the judiciary with big problems.
Brussels, the district, is perennially cash strapped due to the large contingent of impoverished residents. Flanders is the richest state, but there is a refusal to help out financially beyond what it is obliged to do. The nationalists are in charge and their biggest fear is the expansion of the French speaking "oil slick" beyond its current borders.
(The overall result of 50+ years of this is that Belgian governance structures most closely resemble a plate of spaghetti. The jurisdictional clusterfsck mentioned on the various news shows over the last week or so is also an outcome of this because Brussels is internally divided along language lines as well.)
Brussels is a mostly French speaking blob squarely inside Flanders. Officially bilingual, on the ground it is hard to find enough qualified Flemish speakers to fill certain positions. That leaves both the local police force and the judiciary with big problems.
Brussels, the district, is perennially cash strapped due to the large contingent of impoverished residents. Flanders is the richest state, but there is a refusal to help out financially beyond what it is obliged to do. The nationalists are in charge and their biggest fear is the expansion of the French speaking "oil slick" beyond its current borders.
(The overall result of 50+ years of this is that Belgian governance structures most closely resemble a plate of spaghetti. The jurisdictional clusterfsck mentioned on the various news shows over the last week or so is also an outcome of this because Brussels is internally divided along language lines as well.)
