Jules Gheude is convinced that the seventh state reform will never succeed.
Giving more money to the regions, fewer competences at the federal level, reviewing the role of the Communities, doing the opposite… this is the incessant game of reforms of the Belgian federal state. A seventh is currently on track to review the internal functioning of government institutions. For Jules Gheude, who has been campaigning for several years to attach Wallonia to France, this reform has little chance of succeeding.
The essayist, who presents himself as pessimistic about the future of Belgium, prophesies the end of the Kingdom soon. The 2024 elections could bring about this dark turning point. Vivaldi’s institutional reform project, “this seven-headed hydra full of inconsistencies and flaws” is, in his view, doomed to failure. “In 2024, the famous Belgian compromise will show that it has reached its limits and we will find ourselves faced with a dialogue of the deaf”warns the Walloon intellectual.
Over the past 50 years, Jules Gheude has written around fifteen books, many of which focus on the cracks in Belgian institutional models. His observations were meticulously compiled when he was director of international relations at the Ministry of the French Community, a close collaborator of the presidents of the PRL Jean Gol (1980) and Louis Michel (1982), but above all as an assistant to François Perrin, a man whose he praises charisma and intellect. Perrin, who joined the federal government in 1974, attached great importance to regularly taking the pulse of Flanders. “ He hired me in his firm only to take care of the Flemish press. Every day, from 1974 to 1976, I translated all the Flemish editorials for him. I was then able to use this knowledge to write my various books.” In 2006, after RTBF’s Bye-Bye Belgium coup, the activist said he felt a change in community relations. “ I had the feeling that the dismantling of Belgium was a inevitable phenomenon.