Flemish liberals want to give English a place in Brussels’ town halls

The Brussels section of the Flemish liberal party Open VLD has tabled a series of proposals to reform the way in which the capital is governed. The proposals came from the Brussels Regional Finance Minister Sven Gatz and the Federal Secretary of State responsible for the budget Alexia Bertrand. One of them is to give English a place in local town halls.

Currently local officials are only legally obliged to communicate with the public in the two official languages in Brussels: French and Dutch (although some do have issues regarding their competence in the latter). Under the proposalsa that were approved at a party conference at the weekend, newcomers that are unable to communicate in one of our capital’s official languages would be able to get their official business done speaking English. However, Mr Gatz told VRT Radio 1 that the documents they would be issued with would still be in either French or Dutch. He went on to say that doing this is simply updating the rules on language use to adapt them the modern-day Brussels that he said “is more cosmopolitan than New York”. The party is also in favour for voting rights for EU citizens at regional elections.

Fewer regional MPs, fewer municipalities

Open VLD also proposes reducing the number of regional MPs from 89 to 50. Of the 50, 10 would be “Dutch-speaking” (currently 17) and 40 Francophone (currently 72). Furthermore, Open VLD wants the current system where party lists for the regional elections must be made up of people from the same “language group” (Dutch or French) to be scrapped. The party also wants all municipalities with a population lower than 100,000 to merge with their neighbour(s). There are just three Brussels municipalities with populations in excess of 100,000: The City of Brussels, Anderlecht and Schaarbeek. Sint-Jans-Molenbeek is just under that figure. Open VLD also calls for the “Community Commissions” (VGC/COCOF/GCC) to become fully integrated into the regional structures. The Community Commissions are responsible for things such as culture, sport, (some) education, welfare, etc.