A layer of dust and disinterest often hides the glorious industrial past of Wallonia, the French-speaking region of Belgium. Cities such as Charleroi or Verviers today offer gloomy black and white prints, but in their day they led the revolution that turned the small and young country into the most industrialized in Europe, only behind the United Kingdom.
In the old coal mine of Bois du Cazier, in Marcinelle, on the other hand, they are reclaiming their past and have turned the facilities into a museum. Not to forget where Europe comes from, they say. Nor his glories and his miseries. For the newly inaugurated Belgian presidency of the Council of the Union, the site 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 otherwise Europe will end up as an industrial museum," warns Geert van Hecke, head of sales at bus manufacturer Van Hool, still upset at having lost the contract to manufacture 92 vehicles to the Chinese company BYD electrics for the public transport company of Flanders, De Lijn.
In Wallonia they know 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, especially to the 262 workers, mostly Belgian and Italian, who lost their lives in the bowels of the mine on the fateful August 8, 1956. Almost seventy years have passed, but the children and grandchildren of these miners return every year to the site as if the fire in the elevator mine had taken place yesterday.
There were no Spaniards among the dead. In the wake of the accident, Italy refused to continue sending workers to Belgium (the bilateral agreement signed between the two countries in 1946 basically exchanged labor for coal: Rome received amounts proportional to the number of workers it sent), but Franco's Spain offered to collaborate and from the end of 1956 miners from Asturias, Teruel or even the Canary Islands arrived in the region, attracted by the wages. The accident intensified social protests and labor demands in Wallonia, and workers from non-communist countries were particularly 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 are working for the future in Wallonia today. The region was a victim at the end of the 20th century of the so-called "coal curse" that affects the old mining regions, characterized by poverty rates and educational deficiencies that are more acute than those of other deindustrialized territories and that slow down the reconversion 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 grant-driven technology campus.
"We are a statistical anomaly", admits Dominique Demonté, its CEO. "Belgium is a small country, there are only 3.6 million francophones and twenty-five years ago nobody worked in the biotechnology sector here," he explains next to a photo of the vast field that stretched out where today it hosts a hundred companies, many of them international, attracted by the low costs, good air connections and geographic centrality. The technology park employs 3,300 people, a number they propose to triple by 2030. Too bold? About this, it's better to ask the brave people who have begun to produce wines, especially white and sparkling wines, in such beer-producing lands.
The decline of Wallonia during the latter part of the 20th century coincided with the rise of Flanders (6.7 million inhabitants) as the economic engine of Belgium, a turn that came accompanied by demands for autonomy that turned the country in 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 in Wallonia) has one of the densest, most competitive and leading SMEs in Europe, but concern about the specter of deindustrialization is evident among entrepreneurs and Belgian politicians.
While Van Hool's representative complains about the lack of protection due to unfair Chinese competition, the Minister President of Flanders, Jan Jambon, criticizes the European Commission for having allowed Germany and France to inject their companies with public subsidies outside the reach of the little ones. "The EU was built on the principle that we would compete with the outside, instead of harming each other with disproportionate State aid", he protests.
Victims of international competition and the oil crisis, Wallonia's mines, forges and factories gradually closed down throughout the 1970s. The dust coated industrial facilities along the entire old Belgian industrial belt until arriving, thanks to the river channel that connects Charleroi and Brussels, to Molenbeek. Formerly known as "little Manchester", the neighborhood, 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 election on June 9 the leading party in the north of the country could be the separatist far-right, Vlaams Belang. Despite the difficulties, Belgian politicians radiate 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 'plan trekkers'", sums up the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Hadja Lahbib, using a Dutch expression that comes to say that they know how to be smart, that they are able to find solutions to all problems. They are also the authors of the expression commitment in the Belgian way, for their talent for building bridges, agreeing resignations and closing agreements. And a country that embraces diversity, "where a daughter of immigrants can be Minister of Foreign Affairs", celebrates Lahbib, who is the daughter of one of the Moroccans who worked in the mines of Wallonia.
