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Failing states in Europe? Belgium, UK, Serbia, Spain etc

  
 
Closed for Business Time
11:40 / 06.12.07
So, are we seeing the beginning of the end of several states in Europe?

Belgium hasn't had a government for months, with many believing it'll split into Flanders and Wallonia, one rich and Vlams-speaking, the other poor and French-speaking. God only knows what'll become of Brussel. Some even suggest resurrecting the dormant city-state entity.

UK and Spain both have long-standing issues with how to keep their disparate parts together. UK (or is it England?) v Scotland of course being the hot potato atm.
The central government in Madrid has long fought the ETA and the other Basque separatists. Another issue is the strong separatist movement in Catalunya (which includes the city of Barcelona for those who didn't know).

Kosovo could decide to unilaterally (albeit with a tacit nod from the EU) declare independence from Serbia, reopening the Balkan powder keg.

Turkey's longstanding war against the Kurds is of course well known.

More on the fringe, the Sami population of northern Scandinavia are talking, albeit not too loudly, about an autonomous region that would incorporate parts of Finland, Norway, Russia and Sweden.

France has got the Corsican separatists, and others less well known. Italy could potentially split into a rich north and a poorer south. The Sardinians as well have some separatists among them.

I don't even know where to start on the political turmoils of the Caucasus region.

But, leaving aside the Caucasus and concentrating on the EU states and those who might become EU members in the near future: Are we going towards a European superstate with no internal borders as the industrialist, post-Enlightenment nation-states disintegrate? Is regionalism the new nationalism? Is it going to be bloody violence?

Over to you.
 
 
eye landed
18:47 / 06.12.07
there have always been regional separatists. but it does seem that in a huge area of open borders and an emerging continent-level executive (i mean the eu of course), federalism could easily burn out or fade away. thanks for floating the idea.

do you see these city-states looking for self-sufficiency and -sustainability, or do you see them specializing into regional epicurianisms? i think the former, but only because i expect that the vestiges of the federalist trade structure required a fair amount of specialization anyway (such as the french aoc). however, i can also imagine a political fragmentation thats actually driven by regional industries.

dont know much about europe! but i like the idea!
 
 
infinitus
21:25 / 06.12.07
Most probably regionalism is the new nationalism, yes, in one sense of the word, but I'm not sure if it has anything to do with the separatist issue. The nation-state has been steadily weakening, but not foremost as an identity-factor but as an economic one, in the globalization process. It is still strong on a number of points though, as nations still maintain monopoly of violence and control of extra-european migration, for example. The nation-state is not doomed to die, just to change it's role. Regionalism as in the EU or (and better) the ALBA of Latin America has the potential to strengthen regions of states in a neoliberal world of transnational power.

How the separatism plays into all of it I'm not sure - but it's surely possible that said regions over time will desintegrate into smaller units that will take over the role the current nation-state has. But I don't think it will be tomorrow. Nationalist trends are much stronger in Europe as a whole than separatist ones, although that has more to do with xenophobia, islamophobia and legitimization of neocolonial and racist foreign policies, I think.

Regarding the Sami, a few of my friends are Sami politicians and they think it unlikely that an actual autonoms region would ever be formed. Sapmi (the Sami name for their territory) already has some self-governance and thier own transnational elections. What they are mostly fighting for is landrights (which surely they have the right to under the new UN indigenous people's convention).

I was in Brussels last week and the situation there seems extremely tense, even though I doubt an actual division of the state will be taking place. More regional autonomy may be the outcome however, with Brussels going - I don't know where. It is the capital of Europe in the EU sense so who knows... It's interesting that the monarch had to elect an acting head of state though! Very rare. Also that the monarchs children have a right to seats on one of Belgium's political councils. Strange country.

Anyway, the EU is totally fucked up in so many ways, and how a federal state will ever be made reality is beyond me - and I sincerely hope it will never happen. The EMU is proving to be a really bad idea, and the democracy deficite is really huge in the whole structure. If the United States of Europe is the alternative I'll stick with my Nation-State, please.
 
 
Dutch
10:38 / 07.12.07
Wow, I didn't know the situation in Belgium had become this bad. 180 days without a government at the moment... It seems to me that this is a resurgence of the age old languageproblem that existed between the dutch-speaking flemish people and the francophone populace of Wallonië. When I lived in Belgium, it was often explained to me that in the past, the francophone community acted in a very condescending manner towards the dutch-speaking Flemish people - the former held the reigns in terms of economic and political power, and people were forced to speak French everywhere in public for instance.

Now that the economic situation has changed: the Flemish region now represents the most affluent region of Belgium, there seems to remain the problem of how to prevent the differences in culture and language between the two main regions from becoming unsurmountable. For the past couple of years, the right wing Flemish party "Vlaams Belang" has also been agitating the traditional government with recurring calls for Flemish separatism.

It seems very ironic that the country in which the EU-headquarters is seated, is seemingly fracturing under internal pressure. I think that the current situation in Belgium is the issue of an age-old problem having been given new clout because of the prospect (that many Europeans find scary) of the creation of a too powerful meta-national structure like the EU. Even here in the Netherlands, the idea is permeating the populace that we will lose far more of what is perceived as our culture to the formation of one too powerful EU, than gain in terms of economy.
 
 
Closed for Business Time
10:56 / 24.02.08
So, Kosovo has unilaterally seceded from Serbia with the approval of USA and most of the EU heavies. Accusations of breaches of international law are flying all around, the Russians are ramping up the New Cold War, Serbians are burning embassies in Belgrade, and the Albanian Kosovans are celebrating.

So, what are we seeing? Retrograde nationalist Serbs against freedom-loving "good Musulman" Kosovans? Ex-drug-running, ex-trafficking ex-terrorists turned politicans against relatively progressive Serbs upholding the principles of national sovereignty and international law? Something else entirely?

I really don't know what to think of this situation. It's almost no use looking at history, I feel - the flux of politically driven settlement patterns makes it hard to sympathise with any claims of "we were here first" or such-like, which really ought not to matter anyway, but is still a rhetorical favourite of many stakeholders in this issue, AFAICT.

What is this doing for political stability in the Balkans and for East-West relations (US-RUS especially), and for internal EU politics?

Personally, I doubt if we'll see any protracted violence among the states themselves - Serbs are tired of war (polls showing only 10% wants armed conflict) and the Kosovans surely know that such a conflict would be massively disruptive to their plans of building a nation-state.

The most obvious problem for the Kosovans and their backers at the moment is perhaps the sabotage being done on institutions and infrastructure in the border area with Serbia, where Serbs are often in the majority, and mightily pissed off about the situation. Link to BBC article

This is one messed up situtation. That's about all the analysis I can muster at the moment. Your take?
 
  
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