Word: wallonia
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...daily Le Monde, might once have seemed ridiculous for a country whose postwar prosperity nourished one of the highest standards of living in Western Europe. But while a succession of revolving-door governments (32 in 38 years) grappled with endemic linguistic feuds between Dutch-speaking Flanders and French-speaking Wallonia, a reluctance to give up the good life pushed the country beyond its means. Soaring wage costs drove out foreign investors, unemployment rose to 12.5%, and runaway government spending set the divided nation on a course toward insolvency...
Instead, the unions directed their wrath toward the European Community, which last week issued an important rebuff to a Belgian plan to restructure the nation's archaic steel industry at a cost of $1.1 billion and 5,000 lost jobs. Two major trade unions in Wallonia promptly began a weeklong series of strikes and demonstrations...
Martens fears that the Community decision could revive the smoldering cause of linguistic separatism because the ailing steel industry is concentrated in French-speaking Wallonia. Says he: "All the tensions surrounding the regional balance in the country have been provoked again." That, in turn, could threaten the :ntire recovery program. Martens' four previous governments collapsed over linguistic or economic disputes...
Moreover, the Europe-wide average understates the human plight, and political explosiveness, of unemployment that approaches 20% in such industrially depressed pockets as Northern Ireland and Belgium's Wallonia.* Warns Ivor Richard, European Commissioner for Social Affairs: "This is bound to place immense strains on the social fabric of our societies. With the increased propensity to violence amongst those who feel they have been victimized, this could threaten the very roots of our democratic and free societies...