The World

Both Belgium and the Netherlands seem to be trapped in political limbo – drifting along without governments and unable to form a new coalition.

The political problems of the two neighbours are strikingly similar. Both held elections in the middle of June, within four days of each other. Both ended up with results that were so fragmented that it is proving all but impossible to form a new coalition. In the past couple of days, both the Dutch and the Belgian efforts at forming a new government have collapsed – landing the problem back in the laps of the two countries bewildered monarchs: Albert II of Belgium and Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands.

The politics of both countries are very tortured and introverted, so naturally there are some factors that are highly specific to each nation. But, it seems to me, there are also some common threads. Chief among these is the way in which the rise of new parties – that do not share the consensus values of the traditional mainstream groups – has made it increasingly impossible to find the common ground necessary to form a coalition.

In Belgium the main divisive factor is the growing strength of Flemish nationalist parties whose ultimate goal is to break the country up, into its French and Dutch-speaking components. Even if parties like the N-VA are not demanding independence for Flanders now, their views make it harder and harder for them to form a compromise with the French-speaking parties – particularly when there are bitter linguistic issues to negotiate.

In Belgium, the strength of anti-immigration parties like the Vlaams Belang (formerly the Vlamms Blok) that are regarded as racist by many of the other parties, further narrows the room for agreement. And, across the border in the Netherlands, this is the main factor that has prevented the formation of a coalition.

The problem there is that the Freedom Party of Geert Wilders is too large to ignore and too hardline on the question of Muslim immigration to be easily incorporated into a new government. The antagonism between the Freedom Party and the Christian Democrats has just doomed the latest attempt to form a coalition.

It all sounds rather alarming. There are those who say that Belgium, in particular, with its very high debt-levels, can ill afford to drift along with a series of caretaker governments.

But maybe the Low countries are pointing the way to a new post-modern future, in which the citizenry gradually realise that they don’t need a government, after all.