The linguistic legislation that applies to Brussels is completely out of synch with Brussels’ linguistic practice and even more with its linguistic needs. In its memorandum for the upcoming elections, the Brussels Council for Multilingualism advocates a radical reform.
Philosopher Philippe Van Parijs reflects on current debates in Brussels, Belgium and Europe
Obsolete legislation from 1966
Messages in English in the Brussels metro. Convenient, you may say. Yes, but illegal. Multilingual communication came when Covid hit. A no-brainer, you will say. But no less illegal.
Officially trilingual Belgium is divided in four linguistic areas, three in which only one language is official — Dutch in Flanders, French in most of Wallonia, and German in the small part of Wallonia now often called Ostbelgien — and one in which both Dutch and French are official: Brussels. And according to the 1966 “law on the use of languages in administrative matters”, still in force today, only official languages can be used by local public services in their contacts with clients or in public communication.
Article 11 §3 of that law makes room for one small exception, though. It stipulates that tourist centres can use other languages in order to provide tourist information to tourists. However, that article features in a chapter that concerns exclusively unilingual areas. It does not concern Brussels: here, according to the letter of the law, only French and Dutch can and must be used. It is only thanks to a charitable interpretation that the touristic exception has been extended “by analogy” to the Brussels Region.
Even so, it is clear that the daily practice of public services, from public transport to public hospitals, from welfare services to municipal websites, constantly transgresses the law — and rightly so. It is not only for tourists that the use of languages other than the two official ones is important. It is also important for the many people who visit Brussels for other reasons - from European lobbyists to Ukrainian refugees. And it is even more important for the 10% of the people officially domiciled in Brussels who are unable to communicate adequately in either French or Dutch.
A dramatically changed linguistic situation
What the 1966 law reflects is a conception of the Brussels population as consisting exclusively of two linguistic communities, a majority of French speakers and a minority of Dutch speakers, with a marginal residue of newcomers in the process of being assimilated into one of these two communities, mainly by learning French, which at that time was also the lingua franca of the European Communities. And the law’s main objective, as regards Brussels, was that the Dutch-speaking minority should have the same effective right to be served in its native language than the French-speaking majority.
Six decennia later, the situation has changed dramatically. Only about 50% of the population has French as its sole native language, and less than 6% Dutch. French is still by far the dominant language, with 87% of permanent residents claiming to speak it well, but English, with 34% is now far above Dutch, with 16%. More crucially still, the population of the Brussels Region is extremely fluid. Its current population is approaching 1.250.000 people, but close to 1.500.000 people have settled in the Brussels Region and close 1.400.000 have left it since 2000. Forget the idea that whoever is not part of either the French-speaking or Dutch -speaking Community is involved in a process of assimilation.
Everyone in Brussels realizes that the law is out of touch with the needs of the region, its permanent residents and its visitors. But the law is a federal law, and the official view, in Flanders, is that public services should not adjust linguistically to their clients, but rather provide those among them who are not native Dutch speakers both incentives and opportunities to improve their Dutch. This may still make sense in Flanders but has become pure nonsense in Brussels
Multilingual public services
The 1966 law must be revised accordingly. All legal obstacles that prevent Brussels’ municipal and regional public services from using any language they regard as useful in their contacts with citizens and in their public communication must be lifted. This is one of the firm recommendations to be found in the memorandum recently published in French and Dutch by the Brussels Council for Multilingualism, an organ set up in 2020 by the government of the Brussels Capital region.
Implementing such a recommendation would to some extent simply legalize existing practices. Under the pressure of reality, the Brussels police service, for example, not only allows police officers to use other languages than French and Dutch but even grants them a bonus if they pass a test showing competence in languages deemed useful in their zone. Nearly a quarter of Brussels’ 7200 Brussels police officers receive a bonus for their knowledge of English, and a few of them for their knowledge of Spanish, Italian, German, Arabic or Turkish.
No longer necessary to learn French and Dutch?
Thus, several languages already have some sort of official status in Brussels, and the memorandum pleads for this to be legalized and massively expanded. English, in particular, is even commonly used to refer to core Brussels institutions and initiatives, from BruCity to Good Move. But this does not mean that the two current official languages should lose their privileges.
This goes without saying for French, but also applies to Dutch. Thre proportion of Brussels residents mentioning Arabic as their only native language is now close to the proportion mentioning Dutch as their only native language. Yet, Dutch should not be considered as just one minority language among many. Firstly, Brussels is surrounded by Flanders and many inhabitants of the Flemish periphery use its public services. Secondly, there are many commuters from all over Flanders working in Brussels every day. Thirdly, Brussels must live up to its status as capital of a country in which Dutch is the native language of the majority.
Thus, making public services multilingual does not mean scrapping the primacy of Brussels’ two historical languages. Nor does it mean that learning these languages has become redundant. True, the more multilingual services are, the less multilingual citizens need to be. But for people intending to settle in Brussels, learning languages matters for many reasons other than accessing public services. Knowledge of French, Dutch and English is a major asset in the Brussels labour market. And it is a competence of great value to the members of the political community of a city in which French is dominant, of a country in which Dutch is dominant and of a Union that uses English as its lingua franca.
It is therefore even more important to make Brusselers more multilingual than it is to make Brussels public services more multilingual. But it is also more difficult. Most of the recommendations of the Brussels Council for Multilingualism are about how this can be achieved.
