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BHV – What is it all about?
BHV stands for Brussels-Halle-Vilvoorde. It is a disputed constituency in the center of Belgium that encompasses both the officially bilingual Brussels-Capital Region and the surrounding and officially unilingual Dutch-speaking area around the towns of Halle and Vilvoorde.
When the linguistic border was officially established in 1962 and 1963, Brussels was limited to its 19 municipalities. The Flemish wanted to avoid further growth of the predominantly French-speaking Brussels agglomeration. They feared the gallicisation of the surrounding Flemish countryside. The area around Brussels remained officially Dutch-speaking, although in six municipalities bordering to Brussels, language facilities were granted to the French-speaking minority. Over the years, the French-speaking minority grew and became eventually a majority in those municipalities. This led to the French-speaking demand for annexation of those municipalities to the Brussels-Capital Region. As Brussels and Halle-Vilvoorde were a single constituency for parliamentary elections, the Brussels-based French-speaking politicans had every interest to set themselves up as the protectors of the French-speaking immigrants in what they call the périférie of the capital.
Tensions increased when a new electoral law was voted. For the 2003 parliamentary elections, new constituencies were created based on the provinces. Nine of the ten Belgian provinces formed a constituency on their own. But the province of Flemish-Brabant was split: Halle-Vilvoorde made up a constituency with the Brussels-Capital Region, while the remainder of the province formed the separate constituency Leuven. This situation was ruled as unconstitutional by the Arbitration Court (now the Constitutional Court). It judged that the existence of BHV as a constituency was in contradiction with the explicitly provincial definition of the electoral districts. The Court left open the precise nature of any solution.
Among Flemish parties, there was consensus to request the splitting of BHV. Elsewhere in Flanders, voters can only choose between the lists competing for seats in the Dutch-speaking electoral college for the elections of the Senate and the European Parliament. But in Halle-Vilvoorde, voters can choose between the lists competing for seats in both the Dutch-speaking and the French-speaking electoral college. BHV also means that, for the elections of the Chamber of Representatives, votes can be cast for politicians who don’t even live in the Flemish Region, but in the Brussels-Capital Region. The splitting of BHV would mean that French-speaking voters in Halle-Vilvoorde would still be able to vote for a French-speaking party, but the candidates of that list would have to live in Flanders.
The French-speaking parties are radically opposed to the splitting of the BHV constituency, or ask that the six municipalities with language facilities should be added to the Brussels Region as a compensation. They are especially interested in the annexation or Anschluss of the municipality of Sint-Genesius Rode, as this would create a territorial unity between French-speaking Wallonia and majority French-speaking Brussels. Every resemblance with the Danzig Korridor that Hitler wanted to annex from Poland, is of course purely coincidential.
The whole BHV-discussion is highly technical, but it raises tensions and led to the deepening of the gap between the Dutch- and French-speaking community. As in 2003, several Flemish mayors and groupings called for a boycott of the elections. Some Flemish municipalities refused to cooperate in the organization of the elections. Several constitutional experts claim that new parliamentary elections without a solution for BHV would be unconstitutional. The biggest Flemish party CD&V/N-VA declared not to join a federal government without BHV being split (although they did afterwards).
On 7 November 2007, the Flemish parties voted en bloc in the Committee of the Interior of the Chamber of Representatives for the split, while the French-speaking parties refused to participate in the vote and left the room. This vote didn’t solve anything, as the French-speaking minority dispose of a whole set of mechanisms to block the further procedure. But such a situation had never previously occurred in Belgium and showed how deep the differing opinions are rooted.
BHV has a highly symbolical value. Do French-speakers in Flanders accept the linguistic borders that were drawn in 1962 and that seperate Flanders, Wallonia and the Brussels-Capital Region? Or do they consider the Flemish municipalities that surround Brussels as lands that can be colonized by French-speaking immigrants and that can be added to the Brussels Region as soon as the French-speaking minority becomes a majority? That is the real question behind the Byzantine BHV-discussions.
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