E-book 3 - van der Kris Comment

Belgium – a praline marriage Jeroen van der Kris (NRC Handelsblad) The heat of the discussions in the media, parliament and public opinion led foreign observers to believe that the country was about to fall apart.” This quotation is about Belgium. It could very well refer to the situation after the elections for the federal parliament of June 2007, when it almost seemed impossible to form a new government. But in fact the remark – made by historian Sophie De Schaepdrijver in one of her books – refers to Belgium on the eve of World War I, almost a hundred years ago. When I moved to Brussels in 2005, to work as a correspondent for NRC Handelsblad, a Dutch newspaper, I also was a badly informed foreign observer. Naïve as I was, I discovered something I did not know. At least, I thought I discovered something. Belgium does not really exist. It is a standard procedure for a newspaper like mine. Whenever something happens in a home country, in this case the Netherlands, the editorial staff calls a couple of correspondents and asks them: what is the situation like in your country? In Belgium it was not always easy to answer a simple question like that. One time there was a proposal to give young people free entrance to Dutch museums. Then there was a discussion about the integration of migrants. Looking for information on those issues in Belgium I learned I should not always call the spokesperson of a minister of the Belgian government. It ...