- BRUSSELS: One year after elections were supposed to offer a way out of endless linguistic bickering, Belgium is still looking for a government and the infighting between Dutch-speaking and Francophone parties is worsening.
Monday marks a full year since elections brought the anti-Belgium N-VA regionalists to the fore in Dutch-speaking Flanders and left the pro-Belgium Socialists as main party in the Francophone regions.
The two need to work together to form a unitary national government, but have been spectacularly unsuccessful during a year of bitter sniping, interspersed with periods of cold silence.
In the meantime, a caretaker government is trying to take care of business, but is hamstrung by an inability to take decisive action while international investors take an increasingly dim view of things.