Manifesto For Walloon Culture - New Debates

New Debates

The Walloon Minister President started a debate about the Walloon identity on 1 March 2010 in the newspaper La Meuse. He will make the proposal to his government to rename 'Walloon Region' as 'Wallonia'. The director of the Institut Destrée commented this initiative the day after on the RTBF. He linked this initiative and the Manifesto for Walloon culture together:

Everybody who is an inhabitant of Wallonia is a Walloon and that's the spirit of the Manifesto for Walloon Culture of 1983. That's the great difference between the debate in France about the national identity and our debate. —

Le Figaro (4 March 2010) reminds the last sentences of the Manifesto for Walloon Culture : 'All those who live and work in the Walloon region are undeniably part of Wallonia.' These sentences are hopefully a reason to hope a peaceful debate...'

Criticism about this new debate appears both in Wallonia and Brussels. But perhaps mainly in the Brussels' Newspapers. For instance Pascal Lorent in Le Soir 4 March 2010 writes: 'The Walloon identity doesn't exist'. And Pierre Bouillon wrote in Le Soir 6 March 2010 that the Walloon identity refers mainly to tourism, unemployment and bribery in Charleroi. It seems that the dispute between Brussels and Wallonia about this issue remains as for instance Europe since 1945: an encyclopedia, Tome I wrote it for some years: 'A Walloon identity is also emerging that exhibits at the political level the still mainly hidden tension between French-speaking Brussels and Wallonia' On the contrary, it seems to Paul Piret, journalist at La Libre Belgique, a debate on the concept 'Identity' is good about political citizenship, roots, collective project and even pride.

Bouli Lanners said that his films are the reflection of the Walloon culture but with an Americain inspiration because we are overflowed by the American culture