The Congo crisis (1960-1965)

The Congo became independent in 1960. Belgium played in this crisis a ambiguous role which lead to the murder of Patrice Lumumba and to the establisment of the Zaire.

The linguistic wars

This Flemish resurgence has been accompanied by a corresponding shift of political power to the Flemish, who always constituted an absolute majority of the population (now around 60%).

The linguistic wars attained their climax around 1968 with the splitting of the Catholic University of Louvain into the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven and the Universite Catholique de Louvain.

Well-known "battles" (quite harmless ones indeed) found place in Voeren between the Taal Aktie Komitee and the Walloon leader Jose Happart.

The rise of the federal state

The successive linguistic wars have made the successive Belgian governments very unstable. The three major parties (Liberal -right wing-, Catholic -center- and, Socialist -left wing-) splitted in two according to their French- or Dutch-speaking electorate. A fixed linguistitic border was established within Belgian between Wallonia, Flanders and, Brussels which gained progressively a lot of political autonomy.

The fall of the Belgian economic miracle

Belgium made huge debts during the time the rates were low and made new debts when it had to reimburse. Its debts were amounting to about 130% of the GDP in 1992 and have been reduced to about 99% in 2001 when Beligium entered the euro zone. This very drastic politics has caused a rigorous cutting of all unnecessary budget spending like scientific research and alike.

The Marc Dutroux Scandal

In 1996, Belgium's political and criminal justice systems were shaken when Marc Dutroux was arrested and charged with several counts of murder and kidnapping. Many charged that local law enforcement had not acted competently enough to observe and eventually arrest Dutroux and his accomplices before they kidnapped at least six girls (Julie & Melissa, An & Eefje, Sabine & Laetitia) of which they murdered four (Sabine & Laetitia being rescued just in time) and most probably some gang members. Dutroux went on trial in March 2004 and got a life sentence in prison.

Subsequent parliamentary inquiries indeed proved that the three main police forces were horribly incompetent, bureaucratic, and fighting more with each other than the criminals. On top, the judicial system appeared to suffer from similar problems: bureaucracy, very poor communication with, and support for, the victims, slow procedures and many loopholes for criminals.

As a consequence of this scandal, on October 26, 1996, about 300,000 Belgians marched in Brussels to protest at the presumed failures of the police force and judicial system in this affair. It was one of the largest demonstration in Belgium ever and was called the "White March" (French: "Marche Blanche", Dutch: "Witte Mars").