Last week, Dimitri Bontinck from Antwerp was in Syria looking for his 16-year-old son, Jejoen, while another father from Vilvoorde was reported to have departed on the same mission. As Flanders Today went to press, neither had made contact with his son.

School groupings will begin to take shape in 2017. Each group will be made up of several schools, with a total student body of at least 2,000 and an average of 6,000. The creation of co-operative groups will not be obligatory, but Flemish education minister Pascal Smet held out the possibility of offering financial incentives to move to a group system. Management staff might be eligible for more pay if they work at a group level, while teachers would move towards being employed by a group rather than a single school.

Schauvliege’s “concept note” is a sort of white paper on the evolution of cultural policy in the coming years and will eventually be translated into a new Culture Decree. One of the main goals of the paper is to increase the pool of members of the various committees that advise the minister on the subsidies to be granted to groups and organisations, in order to make it easier to avoid conflicts of interest.

“Because of my political inspiration, rooted in the Christian-democracy and the Christian workers’ movement, some people find it unimaginable that I can function impartially as a minister for finance, even though there is nothing to prove this allegation. ... This atmosphere of distrust keeps me from my work, which is not in this country’s interest. It is not in my party’s interest either. I admit that it is more than what I can take as a person. Any doubt about my integrity, I find very unjust.”