Olivier Maingain, president of the militant francophone party FDF, compared this decision with Nazi occupation practices, a remark that caused general indignation on both sides of the language divide.

At around the same time, it became known that some Flemish mayors in the same area had asked property developers not to sell residences to (mostly French-speaking) people from Brussels. Again, this led to a public outcry on both sides of the language divide.

All of this may easily lead to the wrong conclusions. One might conclude, for instance, that public opinion on both sides of the language divide is alike. It is not. One might also assume that the Brussels periphery is at the centre of Flemish politicians’ attention. It is not. Or one might think that something important is going on here. Well, there is, but these incidents are merely shadows on the wall.

For, in the meantime, former prime minister Jean-Luc Dehaene is finishing talks on Brussels-Halle-Vilvoorde, the bilingual constituency that the Flemish want to split so that it corresponds to the constitutional design of Belgium.

In recent years, French-speaking parties have often presented the split as the beginning of the end of Belgium. Put like this, the issue inevitably arouses emotions. The debate became even more heated when prime minister Yves Leterme made the splitting of BHV an electoral promise in the 2007 federal elections. Since then, a lot has happened, but most people now agree that BHV should be split, if only to get rid of the darn issue. Dehaene, who is known both for his discretion and pragmatism, has been working away behind the scenes to find a solution.

As his deadline nears, no-one knows how close he is to a solution. Still, most people assume that an agreement will be found. If not, the Flemish have threatened to use their majority in parliament to vote on the split.

There is another argument to make all parties want to compromise, which is that everyone agrees that if Dehaene cannot do this, no-one can. And that really would send this country into a deep crisis. Much deeper, anyway, than any peripheral scuffle could do.