Belgian State Research Articles

Reorganise primary care in Flanders Region: change management and process 2010-2017.

Reorganizing primary care in Flanders is a process of change management, creating ownership amongst a variety of actors and disciplines, creating trust via a process of participation of partners. Trust is needed to incite the change of care provision for the benefit of the person in need. The process aims to simplify primary care structures. The challenges in Flanders are similar to other countries. The international experience gave food to frame the change trajectory into a 2015 -2019 Vision on the Reorganization of the Primary Care. In 2010 Flanders concluded that the catalyst for cooperation between primary health and social care professionals was data- and information sharing. In 2013 such were considered as a starting point for the evolution towards integrated care. The 6th Belgian State Reform of 2014 devolved more health competences to Flanders. Flanders conviction is that the reinforcement of the primary health care is crucial, focusing on care continuity, elderly care, mental health care,…. The starting point is to strengthen the existing primary care. Flanders’ 6 milj habitants live in an urbanized landscape. A crucial question is on how to delineate care- areas and how to organize the care coordination for the person in need. Bottom-up approaches and autonomy of the local level are key. Belgium health care is characterized by the freedom of choice for the patient, which can be an opportunity or an obstacle for fluent integration of health and social care into model(s) of personalized care. The Belgian institutional landscape requires cooperation. Flanders has during this process favored the bottom-up approach from micro- (citizens, neighborhood ,care – team) via meso- (primary care organization) to the macro-level (national, international). This is crucial to create ownership and to shift towards patient-centered integrated care. Flanders’ path on integrated care identifies how the primary care meso-level should function. By extension, the regional policy support will also be redefined. In order to restructure the meso-level in a well-founded way, it was vital for Flanders to formulate clearly how to organize integrated care, how to place the person with a care need at the center of the care process. At the same time the data and indicators were determined in order to achieve this in a qualitative way, in specific areas, where cross-compliance is necessary to mobilize the care providers. 6 working groups worked since autumn 2015 : Models for Integrated care; Focus on the Patient; Targets and Structure Integration; Geographic demarcation of the care regions; Data sharing and Quality of care; Innovation and Entrepreneurship in Care. Their conclusions were reviewed by a Scientific Panel. In January 2017 the Maturity Matrix will be applied. The Primary Care Conference of 16 February 2017 will endorse the outcomes which is the beginning of the implementation phase. This Reform process is characterized by a participatory process from all professionals in health and social care, civil society organizations, formal and informal care, other policy areas, … . A lot of lessons and experiences can be shared.

‘The Congo must have a presence on Belgian soil.‘ The concept of representation in governmental discourses on the architecture of the Ministry of Colonies in Brussels, 1908–1960

While parliament buildings and governor‘s palaces have been studied as embodiments of governmental or colonial power, the architecture of the often more mundane state administrative office buildings has only received scant attention from architectural historians. In this article, we seek to demonstrate that political discourses concerning such buildings can nonetheless reveal important conceptions of colonial power. Rather than focussing on how such power was accommodated in and shaped by state-built architecture overseas, this article draws attention to the representational aspects of colonial governance in a mother country through an analysis of various projects proposed for the Belgian Ministry of Colonies (1908–1960). In the 1930s, when it was still housed in an eighteenth-century neoclassical building in Brussels, the Ministry of Colonies was included in a visionary but unsuccessful civil service reform, which was aimed at a modernisation of the Belgian state bureaucracy and its office buildings. After the Second World War, when colonialism became increasingly criticised in international fora, successive Belgian Ministers of Colonies pleaded for the construction of a new, grandiose ministerial complex, which was supposed to symbolise efficiency, modernity, and—above all —the permanence of the colonial undertaking. Even though important steps were taken to realise this complex, the project was outrun by the global decolonisation process, of which the independence of the Belgian Congo (1960) was an inevitable outcome.

La ville, la nation et l'immigré: Rapports entre Grecs et Turcs à Bruxelles by Katerina Seraïdari

Reviewed by: La ville, la nation et l'immigré: Rapports entre Grecs et Turcs à Bruxelles by Katerina Seraïdari Meropi Anastassiadou (bio) Katerina Seraïdari, La ville, la nation et l'immigré: Rapports entre Grecs et Turcs à Bruxelles [The city, the nation, and the immigrant: Relations between Greeks and Turks in Brussels]. Paris: L'Harmattan. 2012. Pp. 214. Paper €20. Katerina Seraïdari has chosen Brussels, the symbolic heart of political Europe and seat of its central bodies, to study the relations between two foreign and immigrant communities, both originating on the margins of the European continent. Although its main theme is the relations between Greeks and Turks on an apparently neutral ground, the book raises many other questions. To what extent does a nation of origin keep its control over its expatriated communities? Do deterritorialization and distance from their respective fatherlands lead to some rapprochement between Greeks and Turks, traditionally considered as enemies and hostile to each other? This book claims to adopt an anthropological approach. It relies on fieldwork carried out in 2009 and 2010 and is divided into two parts. The first one is mainly theoretical and conceptual, even if the author illustrates the theory through analysis of specific cases documented in the field, such as mixed marriages or cleanliness as a group's defining element. In the second part, more historical than anthropological, Seraïdari focuses on the origins of the immigration process. She studies alternately the first Greek shops, family reunification, the neighborhood and its functions, national products as identity markers, women's roles, and love affairs, as well as the attitudes of the local Greek and Turkish communities towards the European Union. Through this variety of topics, she provides a broad overview of these two parallel histories of Greek and Turkish immigration in Belgium. The author is very much interested [End Page 602] in knowing what happened at the very beginning of the migration from Greece and Turkey to Belgium and takes a historical approach to examining this phenomenon. This approach is in fact one of the major strengths of her book. Among others strengths, the theme of emulation between communities deserves special mention. Unsurprisingly, Greeks and Turks, who arrived in the late 1950s (Greeks) and the early 1960s (Turks) to work under contract in the coal mines, entered into competition as soon as they settled in and founded viable enterprises. However, emulation is expressed also through the rights granted by Belgian authorities. For example, the recognition in 1974 of Islam as one of the religions of the country was considered also a recognition of Turkish immigration; the Greeks would have to be patient another decade (1985) for Orthodoxy to be officially recognized. For both Turks and Greeks, such a recognition meant that from that moment onwards their imams and priests were employed by the Belgian State. Attitudes towards marriage—such a fundamental matter in locations of immigration—differed between Greeks and Turks in Brussels. According to Seraïdari, the Greeks are much more exogamous than the Turks and have practiced mixed marriages since the beginning of their settlement in Belgium, as recent studies based on the archives of the Greek Church in Belgium have shown (Georgopoulos 2008). However, there are different types of mixed marriages. In the Greek case, a mixed marriage is narrowly understood as a marriage with a national of another country and is not considered pejoratively. Mixed unions with Muslims—whether these are Turks, Moroccans, or others—are considered with reluctance, if not condemned. In contrast, Turkish marriages in Belgium are mostly arranged. Could it be otherwise in such a highly endogamous society? Religious endogamy (marriage with a Muslim), national endogamy (Turkish/Turkish), but also regional endogamy—the best spouse is the one originating from the same region/province in Turkey. Such is the particular situation in Brussels. Unfortunately, Seraïdari does not take the opportunity to note that in other major areas of Turkish immigration (Germany, for example), mixed marriages, especially with non-Turkish (and/or Christian) women, are admitted and far from rare. They are admitted because they are not opposite to the Mediterranean pattern, according to which filiation is transmitted by the father, whereas women are imported...

Belgian Freemasonry and the Colonial Project in the Congo (1876-1914)

Although the history of Belgian colonization of the Congo is predominantly associated with the hegemony of the Catholic Church over the territory, first in the Congo Free State, later in the Belgian Congo, Belgian freemasonry was not uninterested in the colonial projects of King Leopold II and in the subsequent take-over by the Belgian state. However, before 1914, the interaction between freemasonry and the colonial history of Congo would prove relatively brief and rather limited. It would mainly show how far the metropolitan political struggles of a liberal, secular and anticlerical freemasonry were extended to the country’s colonial territory. In contrast to colonial settings other than the Belgian one, the Congolese lodges were far from numerous and had a very limited membership. That same membership was more international than average, but remained quite Belgian nevertheless. The endeavour to introduce lodges into the colonial territory had a distinct Belgian nationalist ring to it, as it was clearly related to a determination not to let foreign grand lodges best the Grand Orient de Belgique in a kind of masonic ‘Scramble for Africa’.

“Le (R)R0I est mort ! Vive le (R)ROI !” : Regulation of electricity distribution in Belgium

La régulation de la distribution est depuis la sixième réforme de l’état une compétence des Régions. Le régulateur flamand a introduit pour 2015-2016 (i) une régulation du revenu (ii) des incitants à la réduction des coûts pour les GRDs. Cependant, le revenu autorisé est toujours basé sur un rendement sur investissement (ROI) régulé et sur un calcul des coûts historiques, comme précédemment. Je présente et je discute les principaux aspects de la réforme en Flandre.

The New Belgian Senate. A (Dis)Continued Evolution of Federalism in Belgium?

The 2012–14 reform of the Belgian state has deeeply transformed its Senate. Not only does the reform reduce the legislative powers of the Belgian upper chamber, but it also alters its composition. The former appointment of Senators based on a system of direct and community-based election is replaced by a system of indirect and mixed regional and community-based designation. This article presents this important reform. On the basis of a comprehensive dataset of federal and regional political careers, it also comparatively analyses the profile of the Senators, before and after the reform. Overall, although rules regarding seats allocation have been thoroughly remodelled, we conclude that the reform had neither dramatically affected the subtle balances upon which the Belgian federal state relies nor altered the patterns of Senators’ profiles.

Belgian Federalism after the Sixth State Reform

Abstract This paper highlights the most important institutional evolutions of Belgian federalism stemming from the implementation of the sixth state reform (2012-2014). This reform inter alia included a transfer of powers worth 20 billion euros from the federal level to the level of the federated states, a profound reform of the Senate, and a substantial increase in fiscal autonomy for the regions. This contribution critically analyses the current state of Belgian federalism. Although the sixth state reform realized important and long-awaited changes, further evolutions are to be expected. Since the Belgian state model has reached its limits with regard to complexity and creativity, politicians and academics should begin to reflect on the seventh state reform with the aim of increasing the transparency of the current Belgian institutional labyrinth.

The Guantánamo-isation of Belgium

Features of the American global war on terror, with its Guantánamo Bay and other secret prisons, where captured detainees are kept outside the national rule of law and international conventions, are being emulated by European democracies, which introduce similar illegal concepts and practices into their penal policies. Now an enthusiastic partner of the US in the war on terror, the Belgian state, fractured internally by the linguistic and regional divide and incapable of finding solutions to the economic crisis, has followed the US in its justice and penal policies. The author charts the erosion of liberal principles within justice policies, from the abandonment of Belgium’s law on universal jurisdiction to the introduction of anti-terror laws and measures; a cooperation agreement with Morocco; and the cavalier attitude to evidence extracted under torture. He examines the significance of the extradition to the US of Tunisian national Nizar Trabelsi. Belgian penal policy has U-turned, especially since the moral panic over child molester and killer Marc Dutroux, and now prisons are massively overcrowded as punishments are ratcheted up. The author argues that the reason for Belgium’s apparent subservience to the US and NATO, and its move to punitive prison policies, lies in its wish to retain its central role within European institutions as it struggles to maintain economic and political stability.

From propaganda to commemoration: reworking the national narrative

In Belgium, memories of the World War I have contributed to the production and the perpetuation of a fractured national narrative. While the official narration emphasizes the unity of the Belgian state and glorifies the heroism of Belgian soldiers acting as a unified force against the German invader, a counter-narrative presents the Flemish soldiers as victims who were used as cannon fodder by the French-speaking commanding elite. In the immediate postwar period, newsreels largely reinforced the image of a national unity during the Great War. Ten years later, however, cinema took an active part in the production of a counter-memory. Met onze jogens aan den IJzer/With Our Troops on the Yser (Clemens De Landtsheer, 1928), a Flemish film, is a key work in this regard. This article first examines the narratives and formal strategies the film resorts to in order to forcefully deconstruct the patriotic narrative and to forge a ‘Flamingant,’ Flemish activist collective memory. It subsequently analyzes more recent French-speaking documentary film projects aiming to commemorate the memory of the Great War. Lacking any overt problematization of their relationship to the Flemish separatist narrative, the documentaries are still shaped by it. Indeed, they either attempt to overcome it by reinforcing Belgium's sense of national identity or to counterbalance it by putting forward a regional narrative that specifically revives the French-speaking Belgians' memory of the War.

Shifting values: The promotional policies of craft and industrial design in Flanders (1980–2001)

Abstract This article looks at the shifts in cultural promotion of craft as a result of a particular political conjuncture in the region of Flanders (Belgium). In 1991, as a consequence of Belgian federalization, the promotion policies for craft in Flanders passed from being answerable to the Belgian state to being answerable to the regional Flemish government. This political change brought about cultural consequences. Industrial design entered the promotional channels that until then had been preserved for craft, and became a dominant referent that dictated its further evolution. Before this, craft had been a site for diversity of material discourses in which the decorative, the figurative and the minimalistic coexisted. In the late 1990s however, this diversity was lost and craft offered a homogeneous sight, characterized by the minimalistic and non-figurative. This article argues that non-creative aspects turned out to be decisive in this struggle between craft and industrial design. More specifically, the fact that promotional policies of craft and industrial design became answerable to economic institutions from the Belgian federalisation onwards enhanced the importance of industrial design and reduced the relevance of craft. This research utilizes a historical politico-aesthetic perspective to analyse the relationship between political and ideological superstructure, and cultural and artistic practices to explain the changes in the aesthetic and stylistic appearance of craft.

Bye Bye Belgium: remediating Flemish nationalism in prime time

This article discusses the special news bulletin on the imminent and unilateral declaration of independence of the Flemish Republic that was aired on the Belgian francophone public broadcasting service (RTBF) in December 2006. Following in the wake of 90+years of Flemish nationalism often tinged with separatism and overshadowed by a history of fascist collaboration during World War II, moreover broadcast in the immediate context of a Belgian state paralysed by petty territorial disputes, the disturbingly plausible docu-fiction Tout ça (ne nous rendra pas la Belgique), which was later titled Bye Bye Belgium, gave the viewing public a bitter taste of the power of Jay David Bolter and Richard Grusin's remediation-concept. Termed an adaptation of sorts ‘designed to erase its own traces’ (Bolter and Grusin 2000), remediation in broad terms implies the repurposing of signifiers and signifying systems into a new, presumably coherent narrative. Philippe Dutilleul, the creator of Bye Bye Belgium, for one, had been accused from various parts in Flanders and Wallonia alike of polarising the political debate and accelerating a psychological acceptance of the country's imminent doom on both sides of its linguistic border. Accordingly, a closer look at the parallel machineries of narrativisation, adaptation and remediation should thereby prove pertinent. After all, remediating a history of nationalist tensions with the willing participation of right-wing Flemish political leaders in prime time on the broadest public platform available in this instance did not fail to make an impact.

The Flemish movement and Flemish nationalism. Instruments, historiography and debates

This article gives a concise overview of the historiography of the Flemish movement and the Belgian nationality conflict. It addresses the main working instruments and scientific infrastructure. Furthermore it provides an overview of the basic works and the most significant literature in English, French and German. It detects the theoretical frameworks and gives a brief overview of the smouldering historiographical debates: the social players of the Flemish movement in the 19th century; the impact of World War I on Flemish nation building; the Flemish movement during the interwar years and World War II; the ideological developments of the Flemish movement and the Belgian state reform after World War II.

Belgian state reform as an opportunity to reorient Flemish housing policy

Flanders, the largest of the three Belgian territories, is one of the most prosperous regions of Europe with a good average standard of housing quality and affordability. Since the reform of the Belgian state in the 1980s, housing policy has been a competence of the regions. Contrary to the preceding Belgian policy that was mainly driven by economic objectives, Flemish housing policy starts with the constitutional right to decent housing and assigns priority to the housing needs of low-income households. One of the difficulties with implementing the right to housing for a long time was that important policy instruments remained federal competences. A planned transfer of competence is now offering a historic chance to reorient housing policy. In this review we describe the historical context of the Flemish housing policy and discuss the main outcomes. We go on to consider the possible changes that may be desirable in the coming reform.

Tinctoris’s Family Origins: Some New Clues

Although a reasonable amount of information has been accruing over the past thirty years or so concerning Tinctoris’s life, especially in France and Italy, it has been difficult to root his musical and legal careers in terms of family background in fifteenth-century Brabant. A newly recovered repository of documents in Tinctoris’s home town of Braine-l’Alleud, along with some others from the Belgian state archives, now enables some early context to be sketched for at least some aspects of his later, multi-faceted working life, in particular as local background to his later law studies at the University of Orleans. These documents, mainly relating to the echevinage of Braine-l’Alleud, show clearly that various members of the Tinctoris (Le Taintenier) family, including his father, had an established involvement with the local governance of both the franchise, or village itself, and its surrounding forainete. As an indirect consequence of some of the detail suggested by this new archival material, we can als...

Validation of LAI and assessment of winter wheat status using spectral data and vegetation indices from SPOT VEGETATION and simulated PROBA-V images

Due to the information gap between the VEGETATION sensors and Sentinel-3 mission, the Belgian state decided to build a small satellite, Project for Onboard Autonomy-Vegetation (PROBA-V), to ensure the continuity of the data record for vegetation studies. In this study, simulated PROBA-V data generated by the Landsat Thematic Mapper (TM) were used to evaluate the potential of this mission to assess winter wheat status. The root mean square error (RMSE) of PROBA-V's leaf area index (LAI), which was generated using the exponential method and the interpolation method, is 0.33 and 0.96 for March 2011 and 1.40 and 3.33 for May 2011, respectively. Système Pour l'Observation de la Terre (SPOT) VEGETATION's LAI does not show a significant relationship with the reference LAI values except for the LAI values during the stem elongation 100% phenological stage generated using the exponential method (correlation coefficient, r = 0.91; p = 0.01). For the tillering and stem elongation 100% phenological stages, linear regression models for the fraction of absorbed photosynthetically active radiation (FAPAR) with PROBA-V's normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) were developed (coefficient of determination, R 2, of 0.94 and 0.88). Exponential models for LAI (R 2 of 0.91 and 0.93) and fresh weight of above-ground biomass (AGBf) (R 2 of 0.90 and 0.93) with PROBA-V's near-infrared (NIR) and visible and near-infrared bands (VNIR B2) were developed accordingly. The assessment of winter wheat status showed that the highest and the lowest values of PROBA-V's simulated data (SD), i.e. NDVI, normalized difference water index (NDWI), and LAI of Field 2 and Field 4, correspond to the ground-measured biometric parameters.

Belgian Public Accounting: Evolution and Compliance with IPSAS

The Belgian public accounting system is continuously evolving, but efforts must still be made to comply with international standards. Public accounting has been modified several times since the law of 15 May 1846 on state accounting. At first, public accounting only consisted of budgetary accounting, but it then evolved and now consists of two parts: budgetary accounting and double-entry general accounting based on transactions and inspired by the one used by the private sector. So, the law of 15th March 1991 on the reform of accrual state accounting and the provincial accounting (Loi du 15 mars 1991 portant reforme de la comptabilite generale de l’Etat et de la comptabilite provinciale, M.B. 22 mai 1991) as well as the law of 22nd May 2003 on the organization of the budget and the accounting of the federal state (Loi du 22 mai 2003 portant organisation du budget et de la comptabilite de l’Etat federal, M.B. 3 juillet 2003) made it possible to introduce such an accounting system. This system has the advantage of providing more information about the financial and economic situation of public entities and of being more accurate, which enables us to estimate, among other things, public property and public debt. Some external factors induced the reform of 2003. Firstly, we can mention the evolution of the Belgian state organization. Communities and regions are now expected to respect general principles, for instance in terms of accounting disclosure. Secondly, the organizational structure of the federal administration has beenmodified by the Copernicus reform (« Copernicus-Au centre de l’avenir: La reforme de l’Administration federale belge », 1er septembre 2004), which constitutes an opportunity to implement accrual accounting in all federal departments. Thirdly, at the same time as this national evolution, there has also been a modernization of accounting at the international level through the introduction of the International Public Sector Accounting Standards (IPSAS) and at the European level through the implementation of the European System of Accounts (ESA). These national and international reforms tomodernize accounting tally with the concept of Int Adv Econ Res (2013) 19:79–81 DOI 10.1007/s11294-012-9386-8

Nurturing Independent Learning in the Undergraduate Student in History: A Faculty–Student Mentoring Experience

Four undergraduates and a history professor planned for and carried out research in the Belgian State Archives in an attempt to answer the call from the Boyer Commission’s seminal report that identified the need for meaningful undergraduate research opportunities in the American higher education system. Our faculty–student mentoring experience provided an opportunity to develop practical skills for historical research. Success of the mentoring project was determined through ongoing dialog and through analysis of student reflective essays. While an international project of this scope may not be feasible for many institutions, mentoring projects in domestic or even local archives could be similarly beneficial.

A Blend of Romanism and Germanism: Experimental Science Instruction in Belgian State Secondary Education, 1880–1914

A case study of secondary experimental science instruction in Belgium demonstrates the importance of cross-national communication in the study of science education. Belgian secondary science education in the years 1880–1914 had a clear internationalist dimension. French and German influences turn out to have been essential, stimulated by the fact that Belgium, as a result of its geographical position, considered itself as the centre of scientific relations between France and Germany, and as actually strengthened by its linguistic and cultural dualism in this regard. This pursuit of internationalist nationalism also affected the configuration of chemistry and physics as experimental courses at Belgian Royal State Schools, although the years preceding WWI are usually characterized as a period of rising nationalism in science, with countries such as Germany and France as prominent actors. To what extent did France and Germany influence Belgian debates on science education, science teachers’ training, the use of textbooks, and the instalment of school laboratories and teaching collections?

Peaks of Internationalism in Social Engineering: A Transnational History of International Social Reform Associations and Belgian Agency, 1860-1925

Concepts for social reform to create an ideal society model experienced several peaks of international diffusion during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The article enquires into the relationship between the transnational dissemination of ideas and the key carriers of interaction in social reform associations, with a special focus on Belgian actors. Arguing that Belgian key figures in loose personal networks were important driving forces for stimulating and organizing the reform associations, the article analyses the making and development of personalized “epistemic communities” and the clashes between different orders of allegiance of the actors—knowledge and its distribution, internationalism and nationalism. Starting in the 1850s, we show how non-governmental experts springing from a close network of Belgian actors successfully shaped the social agenda transnationally until the First World War. This heyday of internationalism, in which not only the Belgian state but even more civil-society actors played an important part, declined after 1914. During the post-war era, government-oriented internationalism considered social engineering as an international administrative matter so that the former civil-society agents, especially from the “small big” countries such as Belgium, experienced a decline in influence. In this atmosphere, nationalist experiences and tensions on a political level affected the flourishing pre-war spirit of internationalism in private associations on social engineering. After the war, their role changed significantly. The private associations were used to channel and communicate social reform ideas as expert forums corresponding with the ILO and the League of Nations.

A survey of software engineering best practices for the development of smart applications in Ambient Intelligence

Over the past decade, the world of Ambient Intelligence and smart environments has brought us a wide variety of novel applications with potential for exhibiting sophisticated intelligent behavior. These applications are called smart because they can sense, anticipate and adapt themselves to the context, desires and intentions of their users. However, the unpredictability of human behavior, the unanticipated circumstances of execution and a growing heterogeneity of future operational environments impose significant development challenges if these innovative applications are to gain wide acceptance in our daily life. Therefore, applying well-established software engineering methodologies is a fundamental prerequisite for delivering high quality and robust smart software applications. This survey provides a illustrative presentation of software engineering best practices in the area of smart environments and Ambient Intelligence. The aim of this survey is not to explore and compare every possible related work in detail, but to offer insights into the latest developments in this domain and to further the research into the successful design, development and evaluation of Ambient Intelligence frameworks and applications. (This research is partially funded by the Interuniversity Attraction Poles Programme Belgian State, Belgian Science Policy, and by the Research Fund KU Leuven.)