Talk:Brussels-Halle-Vilvoorde

message: Dear, being a student from Canada, staying in Belgium for a semester only, I found quite some factual information (both on Wikipedia as elsewhere) that is squarely incompatibele with information I found here.  Could you please clarify.
# The articles says that six of these municipalities in Halle-Vilvorde had populations who were majority Francophone. This is only supported by one French-speaking political party (FDF). I did not find any independant sources for this. Even worse, most states that the six municipalities referred to only had between 30 and 50% French-speakers. What are your sources? 
# Some sources (Flemish) state that Waterloo and La Hulpe had between 30 - 50% Flemings, but were not included under the facilities arrangement, contrary to the legal provisions for that.
# This article suggests that the linguistic facilities were instituted in order to "provide facilities for francophone residents". However, the legal texts I found give a very different picture: they were intended for ALL linguistic minority groups (above 30% of local population), including German speakers in Malmedy, and Dutch-speakers in many Walloon municipalities. This presentation as if facilities were to benefit "francophone residents" appears highly biased and francophile.
# This articles pretends that "In Flanders in particular there has been a steady rise of the extreme-right since that time". However, the major extreme-right party in Flanders ('Vlaams Blok', now 'Vlaams belang') was only founded +/- 20 years after the instauration of linguistic facilities. On the other hand, the nationalistic French-speaking party ('FDF') was founded much earlier. Why only talks about Flemish extremism? And what about german-speakers? Are they happy?
# This articles also fails to note that French-speakers in Flemish municipalities with linguistic facilities and the Flemings in Walloon with municipalities with linguistic facilities enjoy LESS political rights then those in the unilingual Flemish municipalities from Halle-Vilvoorde. As a result, certain French-speakers enjoy extra-territorial voting rights that the inhabitants from the municipalities with linguistic facilities do not enjoy. This means certain french-speakers have rights that Flemings never can enjoy! Isn't this ethnic discrimination? Thus racism?
# The two 'main compromise solutions' proposed in this article do not remediate about this ethnic (or linguistic) discrimination! Why is this overlooked? 
# Even with a constitutional amendement on dual electoral disctricts, the first 'compromise' does still breach the equality provisions in both constitution and European and universal declarations and conventions on human rights.
# the articles states that 'Spirit' would have been the only Flemish party opposed to the latest compromise proposals from Belgian prime minister verhofstadt. However, as far as I found out, many other flemish parties were against: CD&V, Vlaams-Blok (now Vlaams Belang), and N-VA. Groen! appears to be not pro, not contrary. That leaves only VLD and SP.A in favour. is the current presentation in the article not biased?
# Even within the VLD and SP.A, several politicians have expressed their opposition to the 'compromise' (among othters Leo peeters and several other local majors in the SP.A and De Decker and Bouckaert in the VLD). 
Moreover,  this articles states that "A deal was struck, though it served largely Flemish interests.", however, I did not find any factual avidence for the latter claim.
Given all these remarks, this article appears rather biased and partisan, non-scientific.
Yours sincerely,   Jason
:Thanks for these questions, im a Flamish student and this shows to me that this discussion in Flanders is always been overloaded with emotions and populistic remarks. If you can make a more neutral article about this then please do so. I found your comments more interesting than the article
That's pretty strange English for a Canadian called Jason. The fact that the six municipalities have a francophone majority is supported by their voting record, isn't it? 41.241.126.185 (talk) 22:29, 14 May 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Some questions about facts & opinions 

message: Since November 11, 2007, Fernadel failed to initiate the NPOV debate, and failed to explain the disputed NPOV of the article.  In fact, user Fernadel did never do anything other than putting the disputed NPOV tag.  Can all editors please state if they agree or disagree with the NPOV of the article.  Otherwise it seems appropriate to remove the tag. Kvdh (talk) 18:08, 7 September 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: I see no reason to keep the tag. Ceedjee (talk) 18:24, 7 September 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: I remove the flags Kvdh (talk) 23:32, 8 September 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  NPOV dispute 

message: I have a problem with the sentence "French speakers see the legitimacy of their rights challenged by a culture that seems to define itself partly in its rejection of Walloon people (out of a historical frustration)". This is not the case IMHO. Even if it were the case, this would probably require a citation.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 84.193.227.213 (talk) 22:26, 5 December 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: I do agree.  Moreover, I think no citations can be found as it is not true.  There is a huge difference between French speakers and Walloon people.  Especially in the part of Flanders surrounding Brussels the French speakers are people who fled the Brussels area to come to Flanders, and those are not Walloon people. Kvdh (talk) 13:05, 29 May 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  NPOV 

message: Contrary to what certain French-speaking nationalists think, it is far from obvious what advise the Venice Commission gives. Certain documents from this informal bopdy suggest that French-speakes in flanders should be considered as a national minority. Others suggest that those French-speakers doen't astisfy 2 of the 4 criteria put forward by the Venice Commission.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 62.235.179.164 (talk) 09:48, 3 May 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: I believe that this should be corrected too. Kvdh (talk) 13:05, 29 May 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Venice Commission ambiguous 

message: "Another, more obvious and probably more democratic solution would be that the electoral disctricts respect the constitutional boundaries of the language areas." represents the Flemish POV only and is not sourced.  Vb 11:06, 3 May 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: "more obvious and probably more democratic" should be removed Kvdh (talk) 13:05, 29 May 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  POV 

message: I don't think it's in the article that these three municipalities have asked to be included in Brussels if BHV is split: http://elections2010.fdf.be/spip.php?article18  Santori (talk) 19:56, 13 May 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Kraainem, Linkebeek and Wezembeek-Oppem 

message: Rhode-Saint-Genèse has also voted in favour of becoming part of Brussels:  
http://www.lalibre.be/actu/belgique/article/586189/rhode-saint-genese-motion-en-faveur-d-un-rattachement-a-bruxelles.html 41.241.69.175 (talk) 13:58, 1 June 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Rhode-Saint-Genèse 

message: Hello, I made a draft at User:SPQRobin/BHV to re-structure, re-organise, update and improve the article. It's certainly not perfect (some sections still need improvement/references) but imho it's better than the current one. Some things I did:
* Short (and hopefully clear) explanation in the introduction what the problem is. I think that is what most are looking for if they wanted to read the article. At the end of the introduction I wrote "The history, problems and possible solutions are explained in-depth below."
* Different structure: I tried to make it a bit more chronologically: first history, then the new electoral areas of 2003 (what started most of the ), explanation of current structure, points of view, solutions, and at least all the negotiations and attempts to split BHV.
* Better information about history: the section "The creation of the district" was just about the municipalities with linguistic facilities. I shortened it and added other important reforms that made BHV how it is now.
* A lot of content improvements still need to be done, however... (especially the controversial sections)
If there isn't much opposition, I will replace the current article with my version. I hope that way I can help the people who want to know what BHV is. Any comments/problems about the draft are welcome! Thanks, SPQRobin (talk) 15:51, 18 June 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: I've put the new version on the page.. SPQRobin (talk) 15:39, 22 June 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Re-organisation of the article 

message: removed original research from issues, there is no original research, un verified claims are covered by thelack of references--DerekvG (talk) 22:58, 20 June 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Issues 

message: Supposedly the major breakthrough that allowed the new government to be formed was an agreement to split up BHV. Are the details of how this would work public yet? --Jfruh (talk) 02:31, 8 December 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  New gov't  

message: This map is in Dutch; we should try to find one in English. 12.239.145.114 (talk) 19:32, 23 August 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: If you mean the multicoloured map (the second from the top), it isn't in Dutch but in German, complete with German-only captions (e.g. 'Wahlkreise' for 'electoral areas'). Even though German is an official language in Belgium, it is used by fewer than 1% of Belgians, living in a small eastern part of the country (which is included in the Liège electoral area, as there are far too few of them to form an area of their own). Only two of the electoral areas (Limburg and Namur) are named in the official local language, and three of the German names differ so much from the local ones that they are probably unknown even to most Belgians: Lüttich (= Liège), Löwen (= Leuven) and Hennegau (= Hainaut). Antwerp also appears in its German form 'Antwerpen', but that does happen to match the name in the official local language, Dutch. Finally, Brussels appears in its German form 'Brüssel' (French 'Bruxelles', Dutch 'Brussel' without dots on the 'u'). All in all, this is a very unhelpful map. How on earth did a German-language map ever find its way into an English-language article? As for the pale yellow map of municipalities halfway down the page, it is entirely in Dutch, which makes more sense, as all the municipalities except Brussels are in Flanders, and hence officially Dutch-speaking - but the name 'Brussel' is also Dutch. Given the linguistic tensions in Belgium, it would make more sense to correct this to English 'Brussels', or else to 'Bruxelles/Brussel' (with the majority language, which is nowadays French, first).84.243.236.9 (talk) 14:00, 14 June 2019 (UTC)
thread_title:  Map of provinces / electoral areas 

message: Hello fellow Wikipedians,
I have just modified  on Brussels-Halle-Vilvoorde. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:
*Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20100613135452/http://assembly.coe.int/Main.asp?link=/Documents/AdoptedText/ta02/ERES1301.htm to http://assembly.coe.int/Main.asp?link=/Documents/AdoptedText/ta02/ERES1301.htm
*Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20090504123321/http://www.nieuwsblad.be:80/Article/Detail.aspx?articleID=1r1knbcu to http://www.nieuwsblad.be/Article/Detail.aspx?articleID=1r1knbcu
*Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20091207035744/http://www.rtbf.be:80/info/economie/de-wever-torpille-dehaene-de-morgen-166615 to http://www.rtbf.be/info/economie/de-wever-torpille-dehaene-de-morgen-166615
*Added  tag to http://knack.rnews.be/nl/actualiteit/nieuws/belgie/splitsing-b-h-v-is-cadeau-voor-criminelen/article-1194677723914.htm
When you have finished reviewing my changes, please set the checked parameter below to true or failed to let others know (documentation at ).
Cheers.—InternetArchiveBot (Report bug) 21:38, 9 November 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  External links modified 

message: Hello fellow Wikipedians,
I have just modified one external link on Brussels-Halle-Vilvoorde. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:
*Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20110706133344/http://www.brussel.be/artdet.cfm/6003 to http://www.brussel.be/artdet.cfm/6003
*Added  tag to http://grondwettelijkhof.be/public/n/2003/2003-073n.pdf
*Added  tag to http://grondwettelijkhof.be/public/f/2003/2003-073f.pdf
When you have finished reviewing my changes, you may follow the instructions on the template below to fix any issues with the URLs.
Cheers.—InternetArchiveBot (Report bug) 06:44, 1 December 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  External links modified