BRUSSELS, May 8 — In a political rumpus some would say could only happen in quirky Belgium, a dispute over new flight paths and noise pollution is reviving Belgium’s language war just two weeks before elections.
The fact that Brussels airport was built in Dutch-speaking northern Flanders just two kilometres away from the Belgian capital — with its special bilingual status — has poisoned the country’s political life for 20 years.
Now it risks undermining the coalition government led by Prime Minister Elio Di Rupo, Belgium’s first premier from the French-speaking south in more than three decades and the first Socialist at the nation’s helm since 1974.
The airport runways lie east of Brussels but the prevailing winds are westerlies, forcing many aircraft to take off towards the city of a million people, most of them French-speakers, and its surrounding Flemish suburbs which have hugely expanded in the last years.
One after another transport minister has tried to little satisfaction over time to set flight paths limiting noise pollution from the overflights, the last being French-speaking centre-right minister Melchior Wathelet.
In February he ordered the implementation of an existing project to change an air corridor that has set off a massive row.
Aircraft that previously overflew Dutch-speaking areas now roar over the largely French-speaking capital instead, with 35,000 planes per year due to use the controversial route.
That means that the number of Brussels residents affected by the overflights has risen in two months from 152,000 to 388,000, according to city officials, who have filed a judicial complaint against what is now known as the “Wathelet Plan”.
Facing criticism on all sides, including from his own coalition partners, Wathelet this week announced he would cut by half the number of planes overflying the heart of Brussels from tomorrow morning, sending them instead over Flanders.
But his Dutch-speaking allies in government are livid and are also threatening judicial action.
As the nation’s air control authorities Belgocontrol weigh what to do next, tens of thousands of would-be voters have signed petitions against the new flight paths.
On May 25 Di Rupo’s coalition of parties on the left and right, from northern Flanders and southern Wallonia, faces general elections with Dutch-speaking separatists expected to emerge the largest force.
Di Rupo took the helm of the country that hosts EU and NATO headquarters just two and a half years ago after an embarrassing record-breaking political deadlock that left Belgium without a government for 541 days.
The latest polls show the Flemish N-VA separatist party headed by bullish Antwerp mayor Bart De Wever leading the pack with 32 per cent of the vote in northern Flanders, up four percentage points on his 2010 results.
Top in the French-speaking south with 30 per cent are the Socialists. — AFP
