644 Days Without a Government: Belgiums Complex Politics Explained - TLDR News

It's been over 600 days since Belgium had a government, yep that's right no government for approaching two years. In this video we discuss the issues that Belgium faces and how the countries history deeply impacts the countries politics and future.

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[TLDRnewsEU]

I know we addressed this in the video, but there's still a bunch of people talking about it, so on the HAI thing.

We are absolutely aware that HAI released a video on this exact topic only a couple of days ago. We started work on this video on August 20th and the script was finalised on August 26th, so in no way we did we steal anything from HAI - the script was locked down way before that video came out.

Regardless we contemplated not putting this video out, as we were concerned that people would be done with this topic having seen the HAI video. However, we decided that ultimately out video takes a very difficult approach from Sam's.

I don't mean this as an insult to the HAI video at all (I have been subscribed for a very long time and watch most HAI and Wendover video) but those videos tend to only lightly touch on each topic. They give you a brief overview of a topic in a few minutes to give you a starting point if you want to research further. Our video is that further research. As a politics channel and with a political audience we can take 10 minutes to explain the complexities of Belgium's political system which just isn't possible for HAI.

Ultimately I hope you enjoy both videos and as much as we were sad to see our topic taken days before posting, that's just how the game goes. HAI clearly had no idea our video was coming and we had no clue they were doing there's. Though if HAI start explaining trade deals or doing Brexit videos we might have to start writing a dis track...

[SoothingLifeSoundtrack]

A Belgian here: a one off crisis? This is the second time in less than a decade that we've gone 1-2 years without a government. I was kinda surprised our last one wasn't mentioned in the video. I think we hold the world record

[JayJay]

Small correction: France doesn’t have a federal system and the different regions have very little authority on their own. Most authority comes from Paris directly.

[null]

I can't see why party leaders would no longer marry their daughters away to secure a parliamentary majority. It has worked well in over 900 years. Why stop now?

[abdc]

When Syria beat our record, you just know we had to take it back! 🇧🇪☝️💪

[galaxyvita]

Let me be honest as someone that lives there, we don't even notice that we don't have a government. Why? Because we have way to many systems. Also i can't really say the Belgium's really feel a sense of national pride, apart for our football team!

[lcs_crr]

France is a federation? That's new to me

[HarJBeRw]

Just a couple corrections, primarily regarding the historical section:

- Charlemagne didn't conquer the area surrounding Belgium. Rather, the frankish kingdom was established in Belgium, under Clovis I of the merovingian dynasty, and from that core, the franks then went on to conquer large swathes of Gaul and eventually moved the capital from Tournai (in belgium) to Paris. Only then does Charlemagne enter the picture.
- Middle Francia (or Lotharingia, however you want to call it) was important in shaping distinctive identities, not just for the belgians, but the dutch, the burgundians, the swiss, and many other groups, though it was indeed eventually completely scavenged by west and east francia
- The south of belgium didn't speak French at that point, nor did flanders just speak dutch (hell most of France didn't speak french until the reforms of the 17th century). Rather, many states spoke other romance-related languages (mostly walloon and some related to picard) and the other states spoke germanic languages, such as flemish and frankish. However, French WAS spoken by the ruling elites/upper classes of all the regions of modern belgium, especially following the dutch revolt, but the working class didn't. This is a more of an "england before Henri IV" sort of deal, where the upper classes spoke french but their subjects didn't. Then, over the past two centuries, French popularized itself among the masses of Wallonia (similar to how english took over in ireland), and the various dialects in modern-day flanders started uniting around flemish which converged with standard dutch, becoming much more similar (despite it being much more different in the past) and other dialects such as brabantian or limburgish started dissapearing.

The contemporary section was really accurate and informative 😊 Just have two little things to add:
- As you very well explained, one has to keep in mind all the different parliaments and devolutions of power in the country. While it's certainly true that the FEDERAL parliament has a problem with forming coalitions, it hasn't been too huge of a problem because the regional parliaments as well as the linguistic parliaments are very much in session and have widespread competences.
- Regarding the issue of flemish separatism, while it certainly is relevant (N-VA and VB are the two biggest flemish parties after all), it's important to note the presence of Brussels, which was often portrayed coloured in with flanders in those sections. Notwithstanding the fact that a majority of flemings still aren't in favour of separation, the real issue would be what to do with brussels as, despite being an officially bilingual region, 80% of its inhabitants speak french (as do many of the flemish brabantt communes connecting brussels to wallonia.
Anyway, sorry for my nitpicks, really appreciated the video and would love to see more! Always nice to see people talk about our criminally underrated and complicated little country 😄🎉

[michielp]

A small mistake: whil it's true that some catholic parts of belgium stayed loyal to spain, big parts of belgium did revolt and had a big protestant population. Most of Antwerp's protestant population moved to Amsterdam after the city got reconquered by the spanish, this is why Amsterdam grew so big

[florinadrian]

3:52 "ultimately reverting to Habsburg" - actually, the Habsburgs were rulers of Spain as well as Austria meaning Belgium never left their dominion in that period.

[TheRealKingLeopoldII]

Honestly, as a Belgian, we don't notice this in our daily lives.

[jochen]

Historical innacuracy: When Charlmegne (Or Karl der Große) died his empire was directly passed to his son Ludwig der Fromme (or Ludovico Pio in Italian) then when HE died his three sons: Karl, Ludwig and Lothar divided the empire.

[pkomelette]

In Belgium, we say "Pourquoi faire simple quand on peut faire compliqué ?" and I think that's beautiful.

[Intreductor]

Meanwhile History Matters: Why does Belgium exist?

[shaunbrowne]

Belgium: Literally doesn't have a government at the moment.
Also Belgium: Still handling COVID better than the US or Britain.

[KillSteel]

Thank you for the video! As a Belgian, it is nice to see a video about this topic.

I do have one question tho, why did you use red as the representative color of Flanders, and yellow for Wallonia?
In reality, those colors are swapped. Flanders is always represented by yellow, and wallonia by red (as seen in their flags).

[snowcold]

1:50 France is one of the most centralised countries in the world, most definitely not a federation or anything close to one. You could've picked Spain or Italy as better examples

[vampireheart]

It is true that Germany and the USA are examples of a federal system - but France? No. France is a unitary state, the opposite of a federal state, so to speak.

[ceestwirre]

Fun fact: it seems that this period without a government was an economic succes. Budget deficit was reduced and GPD increased....

[mortuos]

Advantages and disadvantages of voting systems sounds like a good idea.