page_title: Peeters directive
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Peeters directive / History
caption_attribution_description: Deutsch: Karte der Fazilitäten-Gemeinden in Belgien, englische Version English: Map of Belgian municipalities with language facilities for speakers of the minority language. Version with English-language place names and legend. Nederlands: Kaart van Belgische gemeenten met taalfaciliteiten voor sprekers van de minderheidstaal. Versie met Engelstalige plaatsnamen en legenda.
context_page_description: The Peeters directive, officially Circular BA 97/22 of 16 December 1997 concerning the use of languages in municipal councils of the Dutch language area, is a circulaire of the Flemish government regulating the use of languages in municipal councils in the Flemish Region, where the sole official language is Dutch. The directive is more in particular aimed at the municipalities with language facilities bordering the Brussels Capital-Region. It stipulates that each and every time French-speakers deal with the government, they must explicitly ask for their documents to be in French.
  The circular caused national political commotion and reflects the conflicting perception of language facilities in Dutch and French-speaking public opinion. The non-appointment of three mayors of municipalities with language facilities — refused by the Flemish government because they repeatedly ignored the Peeters directives — was a highly mediatised issue during the 2007–2008 Belgian government formation. It attracted international attention when the mayors took their case to the Congress of Local and Regional Authorities of the Council of Europe.
context_section_description: With the territoriality principle as the basic guideline of Belgian language politics, the language law of 28 June 1932 divided the country in the Dutch-speaking region, the French-speaking region and the German-speaking region. Brussels received a bilingual Dutch-French status. The law further stipulated that municipalities along the language border and around Brussels had to ensure a bilingual service when the minority language population exceeded 30% (so-called language facilities) and that the language of administration would be changed when this "minority" exceeded 50%. In order to estimate the number of speakers of each language, a decennial language census was established, of which the results were often contested by the Flemish.
  The consensus in contemporary historical and political literature is that the results of the language census have to be interpreted with caution. The questions were alternatively on "known" languages or on the "usual" language, the most often spoken. Some considered this to refer to their mother tongue, while for others it referred to the prestigious and ubiquitous language that was French. Moreover, the censuses of 1920 and 1947 were performed in a post-war climate. Dutch, being closely related with German, was discredited due to collaborationism of certain wings of the Flemish Movement with the German occupation. French on the other hand enjoyed the status of the language of victory. Finally, given that the results had political consequences, inviting for manipulation in some cases, the census had more of a referendum on the language status of the municipality than of a sociological inquiry. In the 1947 census, more than 30% declared to speak French "exclusively or most frequently" in Wemmel, Kraainem, Drogenbos and Linkebeek, which meant that the French-speaking population of these municipalities received language facilities, whereby citizens can request to communicate with the municipal services in the language of their choice, while the official language remained the same.
  The language laws of 1962-63, constitutionally entrenched in 1970, abolished the language census and fixed the language border between the language areas. All Belgian municipalities belong to one of these territories. Some municipalities went from one region to another, while others retained or were given a system of language facilities. Wezembeek-Oppem and Sint-Genesius-Rode became municipalities with language facilities. The last census in 1947 showed that the French minority in these towns was 18% and 16% respectively, but that 35% and 27% spoke French most frequently.
  According to art. 7 of the 1966 law on the use of languages in the administration, the six municipalities situated in the Brussels periphery, namely Drogenbos, Kraainem, Linkebeek, Sint-Genesius-Rode, Wemmel and Wezembeek-Oppem, enjoy a "special treatment" and are called "rim municipalities". As part of the wider Frenchification of Brussels and a process of urbanisation, these formerly Dutch-speaking municipalities became majority French-speaking in the second half of the 20th century. This phenomenon, known in Flanders as the "oil slick", is, together with the future of Brussels, one of the most controversial topics in all of Belgian politics. All other municipalities with facilities, except for those in the German language area, plus Malmedy and Waimes, are grouped together as "language border municipalities" (art. 8).
caption: The municipalities with language facilities in Belgium. Those in Flanders, where the Peeters directive applies, are in red.
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