Johan Deckmyn has been a Ghent city councillor for the Vlaams Belang since 1995 and a member of the Flemish parliament since 2019.
In June, in addition to the European elections, you have elections in Flanders. The polls suggest your victory.
That’s right, and in September we will also have local elections. In the 2019 elections, we had 19%, but in this year’s elections the polls put us at 27%-28%. That makes us the first political force in Flanders, ahead of the hitherto majority N-VA (Neo-Flemish Alliance, a conservative party affiliated in Europe with ECR).
What is the reason for this significant increase?
There are two causes, immigration of course, but also security, and in many cases the two phenomena go hand in hand. In the last few weeks, in Brussels, there have been nine shootings, in which several people have been killed, and which are related to drug trafficking. The police can no longer handle this and in many neighbourhoods there is not even a police presence, because they have become no-go zones.
Yet in Walloon Belgium there is no strong party opposed to immigration. Why?
We can look at it in two ways: on the one hand, the media boycott; and on the other hand, perhaps it is due to the inability of the right wing, because in France we do see the importance of anti-immigration parties. The truth is that the political trend in Wallonia is totally left-wing and with an increasing rise of communist parties.
So far, the Vlaams Belang has been placed in a metaphorical cordon sanitaire by the other parties. If the polls are realised and you become the first party, do you think it will be possible to reach government agreements?
If we are the first party, we will have the possibility to try to form a government, I think within two weeks. All of the journalists in Flanders ask the same question and address it to the N-VA, which does not want to answer. This is already a breakthrough because, in the past, the answer was always against any collaboration. This indicates that there is a possibility of being able to negotiate. The best proof was in 2019, when they were the first party and we were the second, and they talked to us; but we did not have a sufficient majority and the other parties were totally opposed. The big question now is whether we will manage to reach that majority, something that the latest polls confirm. Moreover, it should be remembered that parties that are now even governing in some regions, such as the Liberals, will not enter parliament because they do not pass the 5% threshold. A good example is Antwerp, where they only reach 4%; that benefits the largest party, which is us.
So it is not only a change because of your success, but also because of the failure of traditional parties.
Yes, although there is still a cordon sanitaire at the federal level, because it is not possible to negotiate with the dominant Left on the Walloon side.
What results do you expect in the European elections?
We expect a good result. At the moment we have three MEPs and we hope to get a fourth. The Vlaams Belang belongs to ID, while N-VA is part of the Conservatives and Reformists, and in my opinion an alliance of ECR and ID would be ideal. I understand that there are problems both between different countries and parties that do not make it possible at the moment, but there is more that unites us than divides us. I think now it is time for a rise of the Right and a return to traditional and conservative ideas.
If you still have a majority, your goal is the independence of Flanders in 2029.
That is our idea. If we get a large majority, we want to achieve Flemish independence. The N-VA also wants it, but they have a different idea. Our point is, if we have a majority in the Flemish parliament, to make a declaration of independence and negotiate with the Walloon side to achieve a peaceful transition. The N-VA believes that you can negotiate without making a declaration of independence, but for us that is not realistic. For example, in 1994 there was a state reform to favour Flemish representation in international bodies, but thirty years later everything is still the same because the Walloon side did not want to negotiate and blocked it. For a reform to go ahead it needs a majority in the federal parliament and in the Flemish and Walloon parliaments, so controversial reforms do not succeed.
We need to talk about many issues, and especially about a state reform when it comes to financing, because we transfer millions and millions of euros to Brussels and Walloon every year. But everything is stuck and the situation looks more and more like Greece’s predicament. In fact, if Wallonia were an independent country, it would be bankrupt. The worst thing is that they don’t want to change this situation, even though Europe has told Belgium that it has to cut spending by 27 billion euros, a huge amount. We have to talk about money.
Do you think independence would be accepted at the European level?
It’s a complicated point. I don’t think that, for example, Spain would look favourably on it. But we are talking about a country where a majority has become a minority, it has nothing to do with a case like Catalonia, where a minority wants independence. Here we are talking about a majority, but I understand how difficult it is to understand this. That is why one of our main tasks is to say abroad that Flanders is ready and that we can be an economic power in Europe. Our problem is that Brussels wants to continue to waste money and does not want to change, but we have been asking for change for decades and in the end they will have to negotiate.
To be honest, winning an independence referendum would not be easy either—even though the voters of the Vlaams Belang and the N-VA know that we want independence—because many people are afraid of change. But if we were to ask whether they want to stop financing Brussels, the result would be overwhelmingly in favour. It all depends on how the question is put. I am convinced that if Flanders stops financing Wallonia, its government will lose interest in us and will look elsewhere for that money.
In the current situation, with the Russian invasion of Ukraine and what looks like a return to the Cold War, could this internal process be influenced from outside to destabilise the EU? For example, there are more and more reports of Russian interference in the separatist process in Catalonia.
I don’t see a connection between our internal problems and what is happening in Ukraine. The Russian invasion is wrong and as a party we have declared that Ukraine is an independent country and that its borders have to be respected. But on a geopolitical level, since you mention the Cold War, I don’t think this is like the confrontation with the Soviet Union, which was a bipolar problem, but now it is a multipolar problem: Russia, China, the United States, and Europe as a minor player. Recently, there has been a lot of fuss about Trump’s statements about NATO member countries having to pay their bills, and the truth is that we in Europe have taken our freedom for granted for a long time by depending on the support of the United States. Europe needs to be more concerned about its own defence and be more present on the international stage.
