De Wever pleaded for reunification during a visit by Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte. — © ISOPIX
–
N-VA chairman Bart De Wever argues for a reunification of Flanders and the Netherlands in a confederal state. “I have never let go of the dream that all Dutch speakers would one day live together again in one context. If I could die as a Southern Dutchman, I would die happier than as a Belgian.” He says that in an interview with Trends Talk on Kanaal Z.
–
adbSource: Trends, Knack
—
De Wever and his N-VA are working towards a state reform that will fix confederalism in Belgium by 2024. With Flemish and French speakers, as an orderly way to further distance yourself. But what he actually dreams of is a final reunification of Flanders and the Netherlands.
“That’s a personal point of view I’ve had for a long time. As a young man, I was already co-organizer of a Greater Netherlands student conference in 1993,” he says in an extensive conversation with Trends Talk.
“And I never let go of that dream. I am also married to a Dutch woman, so I also make it true in my own life: that all Dutch speakers would one day live again in one context, the southern and the northern Netherlands. They would make one of the strongest economies in the world. The ports of Antwerp and Rotterdam could merge into the gateway of the northwestern European economy. That sounds like a fantastic story to me.”
–© ISOPIX
–
At the end of June, De Wever argued in a speech to Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte, during his visit to Antwerp, for the reversal of what happened in 1585: the Fall of Antwerp and the separation of the Netherlands.
Although he realizes that people are mentally “not ready” for that. But “things that are unthinkable sometimes become imaginable much faster than you might think”. “And so: a confederation of the Low Countries, the Seventeen Provinces, that it could be rebuilt, bottom-up, by concretely collaborating in many areas that bind us. Yes, maybe the day after tomorrow that will become a reality. If I could die as a Southern Dutchman, I would die happier than as a Belgian.”
— .
