A layer of dust and disinterest often hides the glorious industrial past of Wallonia, the French-speaking region of Belgium. Cities like Charleroi or Verviers offer gloomy black and white images today, but in their day they led the revolution that turned the small, young country into the most industrialized in Europe, only behind the United Kingdom.
In the former Bois du Cazier coal mine, in Marcinelle, on the other hand, they reclaim their past and have converted their facilities into a museum. So as not to forget where Europe comes from, they say. Nor its glories and its miseries. For the newly minted Belgian presidency of the Council of the Union, the place also serves to illustrate common challenges across the continent, such as the risk of deindustrialization, and the importance of innovation. “We need a plan, because if not, Europe is going to end up being an industrial museum,” warns Geert van Hecke, sales manager of the bus manufacturer Van Hool, still upset at having lost the contract to manufacture the bus to the Chinese company BYD. 92 electric vehicles for the Flanders public transport company, De Lijn.
In Wallonia they know well what he's talking about. The Bois du Cazier facilities, declared a World Heritage Site by UNESCO, pay tribute to Belgium's successful history of industrialization and the immigration that made it possible, in particular to the 262 workers, mostly Belgian and Italian, who lost life in the bowels of the mine el aciago August 8, 1956. Almost 70 years have passed, but the children and grandchildren of those miners return to the place every year as if the fire in the mine elevator had occurred yesterday.
There were no Spaniards among the deceased. Following the accident, Italy refused to continue sending workers to Belgium (the bilateral agreement signed between both countries in 1946 basically exchanged labor for coal: Rome received amounts proportional to the number of workers it sent), but Franco's Spain He offered to collaborate, and from the end of 1956 miners from Asturias, Teruel and even the Canary Islands arrived in the region, attracted by the salaries. The accident intensified social protests and workers' demands in Wallonia, and workers from non-communist countries were especially highly valued, explains the guide who accompanied a group of correspondents on a trip organized by the Belgian federal government.
“It is in places like these where the soul of Europe was born,” whisper those who today work for the future in Wallonia. At the end of the 20th century, the region was a victim of the so-called “coal curse” that affected the former mining regions, characterized by poverty rates and educational deficiencies that were more acute than those of other deindustrialized territories and that made their reconversion slower. It's taken a while but it's happening. A few kilometers from the Marcinelle mines, in Gosselies, is the region's great answer to these problems, the Biopark Brussels South Charleroi, a large technology campus driven by grants.
“We are a statistical anomaly,” admits Dominique Demonté, its CEO. “Belgium is a small country, there are only 3.6 million French speakers and 25 years ago no one worked in the biotechnology sector here,” he explains along with a photo of the vast field that stretched where today a hundred companies are located. many international, attracted by low costs, good air connections and its geographical centrality. The technology park employs 3,300 people, a figure they intend to triple by 2030. Excessive audacity? About that, ask the brave people who, in such beer-producing lands, have started to produce wines, especially white and sparkling wines.
The decline of Wallonia during the latter part of the 20th century coincided with the rise of Flanders (population 6.7 million) as Belgium's economic engine, a shift that came accompanied by demands for autonomy that turned the country into a federal state. The port of Antwerp, the second largest in Europe, is its main asset. The rich region (its GDP per capita is 36,400 euros, about 10,000 more than Wallonia) has one of the densest, most competitive and leading SMEs in Europe, but concern about the specter of deindustrialization is evident among businessmen and Belgian politicians.
While Van Hool's representative complains about the lack of protection against unfair Chinese competition, the Minister President of Flanders, Jan Jambon, criticizes the European Commission for allowing Germany and France to inject their companies with public subsidies beyond the reach of the More smalls. “The EU was built on the principle that we would compete with the outside world, instead of harming each other through disproportionate state aid,” he protests.
Victims of international competition and the oil crisis, Wallonia's mines, foundries and factories were closing throughout the 1970s. Dust covered industrial facilities throughout the former Belgian industrial belt until reaching Molenbeek, thanks to the river canal that links Charleroi and Brussels. Once known as “little Manchester”, the neighborhood, the birthplace of the terrorists of the 2015 attacks in Paris, is today the scene of a large-scale real estate operation that includes the transformation of the gigantic Citroën car factory into a cultural space.
Not only have their economic fortunes been disparate: while left-wing parties dominate Wallonia, in Flanders the voter is increasingly conservative, and in the federal elections of June 9 the first party in the north of the country could be the separatist far-right, Vlaams Belang. Despite the difficulties, Belgian politicians transmit optimism and creativity. “Protect, strengthen and prepare” is the motto of the Belgian presidency of the Council of the EU. “We are a country of trekkers plan,” summarizes the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Hadja Lahbib, using a Dutch expression that means that they know how to manage, that they are capable of finding solutions to all problems. They are also the authors of the expression Belgian commitment, for their talent for building bridges, agreeing to resignations and closing agreements. And a country that embraces diversity, “where a daughter of immigrants can be Foreign Minister,” celebrates Lahbib, daughter of one of the Moroccan miners who worked in Wallonia.
