N-VA concerned about interfederal centre for equal opportunities

Last week, Zuhal Demir replaced Elke Sleurs as the secretary of state for equal opportunities. Demir, a Limburger with Turkish-Kurdish roots, took the opportunity to comment on Unia, the interfederal centre for equal opportunities.

Demir said that the organisation was intervening in political issues such as the discussion regarding holiday figure Zwarte Piet instead of doing what it was meant to do. Demir’s intervention was backed by Flemish equal opportunities minister Liesbeth Homans, also N-VA, who accused Unia of being a force for polarisation rather than unity.

According to anonymous sources talking to De Standaard, Unia treats complaints of anti-Semitism differently from complaints of Islamophobia because the agency is largely French-speaking, whereas the Jewish population of Belgium is mainly centred in Antwerp.

“Either you’re open as a centre to anyone who has complaints about discrimination, or you’re a centre for complaints from immigrants,” Homans told the VRT programme De zevende dag. Flanders has its own equal opportunities policy, but that is not translated to a federal level, Homans said.

Questioned by the same programme, Demir said that she was “concerned about Unia as an institution, and I’m not alone. It is a centre for polarisation. The budget is fixed until 2019, so I can’t scrap it just like that, but I will be having discussions to see how Unia can be made to find support in society as a whole.”

Matthias Storme (photo), a member of N-VA who sits on the board of Unia, also questioned the interfederal structure of the organisation. He referred to previous research done by KU Leuven researchers, who concluded, he said, that there should be “separate structures”.

“Within Unia are people with a certain ideological matrix,” said Storme. “I understand why people think Unia acts one way for some, and another for others. The centre carries out research, gives advice and is at the same time an interested party in legal matters. That’s not a healthy state of affairs.”

Both the Christian-democrats CD&V and liberals Open Vld defended Unia in parliament. “We find it important that there is an institution outside of the government that challenges policy,” said CD&V member of the Flemish parliament Ward Kennes, “that forms a counter-balance to the issues of the day.”