It’s been a rough year for Belgium, where terrorists struck in March, killing 31 people in Brussels at the international airport and on the subway.
The attacks drove home the global threat of terrorism and the need for greater cooperation among allies internationally. The tragedy also exposed Brussels’ political vulnerability as the administrative capital of two major Western institutions — NATO and the European Union.
“It was a big shock and I also think that, immediately, the Belgium population has acted in a fairly serene way,” Belgium’s Ambassador to Ukraine Luc Jacobs told the Kyiv Post in an interview. Citizens in the nation of 11 million people set up a shrine to the victims outside the central stock exchange.
While the memories and investigations linger on, Belgians and their friends are looking ahead to a happier occasion, the King’s Day celebrations, on Nov. 15.
In Kyiv, a concert will take place at the National Philharmonic of Ukraine. The event honors the nation’s monarchy, currently led by King Philippe. King’s Day is one of the major holidays, second perhaps to National Day, which celebrates the July 21, 1831, independence of Belgium under a constitutional monarchy and parliament.
King Philippe, who took over from his father King Albert II in 2013, is a “quite popular” and unifying force for the nation, along with his wife, Queen Mathilda, and their four children, the ambassador said.
The terror strike in Belgium, unlike in other victimized nations, did not trigger a backlash against segments of society or an anti-immigrant sentiment. Belgium retained its culture as “an open society, tolerant society,” Jacobs said, taking pride in its multilingualism, multi-culturalism and multi-religious character.
It’s not just a slogan in Belgium, which contains three distinct linguistic regions — the Dutch-speaking, German-speaking and French-speaking parts of the nation.
Additionally, while some of the March terrorists came from a neighborhood with a high concentration of Muslims, who make up 7 percent of the nation, the attacks were “not a reason to stigmatize part of your population or part of your communities,” he said.
Belgium’s location and its citizens’ reputation for “consensus-building and compromise-making” are reasons why NATO and EU headquarters are located there. “We’re not a threat to anybody. We are friends with nearly everybody. We are very acceptable as a host for these types of institutions,” Jacobs said.
The consensus-building was recently on display in resolving opposition that dairy farmers in French-speaking Wallonia, a region of Belgium, had to a free-trade agreement between the EU and Canada. “The compromise we have found amount the different entities in Belgium has allowed them to ratify the free trade agreement with Canada. In the course of two weeks, we had found a solution. It shows the system works,” Jacobs said.
But the political culture of the confederate-style government is representative democracy. Unlike Great Britain, by comparison, whose voters triggered political upheaval this year by voting to leave the EU, “we don’t do referendums,” Jacobs said. “In our political culture, we have learned the referenda are not the best way to govern or legislate.”
The notable exception was the 1950 referendum when voters approved of King Leopold III’s return from exile in Germany after World War II.
The tenure of the polyglot Jacobs in Ukraine since 2014 has been characterized by emphasis of his country’s support of Ukraine against Russia’s war, his interest in traveling to many parts of the nation and his championing of cultural events and historical ties that bind the two nations.
While he says that Belgian businesses face all the same problems as other foreign businesses in Ukraine, including corruption and poor rule of law, he expressed confidence in “a new generation of higher officials that want to bring about change and are really working at that…We have a listening ear to our poblems. We’ve seen a willingness from the government’s side and the administration’s side to help us.”
In return, besides Belgium’s participation in international institutions that aid Ukraine, the nation also has provided 3 million euros in bilateral humanitarian aid last year and this year.
Informally, a Belgian-Ukraine Friendship Group talks over issues. The Ukrainian side is led by members of parliament Mustafa Nayyem an Olena Sotnyk.
The modern-day talks are a continuation of a relationship that dates at least back to Belgian businesses of the late 19th century that located in the Donbas region, history which Belgium is actively involved in preserving.
“Many companies are still there,” Jacobs said. “They have changed thier names. They’ve changed aspects of the products they make. A lot of the architectural heritage is still visible there, which I think in itself an interesting thing.”
“Steel on the Steppe” is an English-language book, written by Wim Peeters and published in 2009, that documents the history of Belgian businesses in Ukraine as well as current investments.
Jacobs planned a trip to the relocated Donetsk University in Vinnytsia this week. The educational institution moved after Kremlin-backed separatists took over the industrial city of 1 million people in 2014.
But, despite the EuroMaidan Revolution that ousted President Viktor Yankovych and trigggered Russia’s war since 2004, “Ukraine is still not known enough in Belgium,” Jacobs said. Ukraine’s international image “is really suffering from the fact that it has far too long been part of the Soviet Union, without a lot of visible identify for itself.”
The more that Ukraine can take advantage of positive developments — such as hosting Eurovision, its Olympic and parylimpic performances, film festivals and the like — the more that the image defined by Chornobyl, fighting lawmakers and war will recede, he said.
Such events “create a more positive, nuanced image about Ukraine,” Jacobs said. “That’s a work in progress. It needs constant effort.”
About Luc Jacobs
He presented his credentials to President Petro Poroshenko on Sept. 11, 2014, after serving in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Brussels. He entered the foreign service in 1986. He holds master’s degrees in law and social law. He is married to Anne Blontrock and is the father of five children.
