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June 1997 showed in a painful way the dangers of Flanders not having a direct vote in the European Council. The problems already started in 1991, at the time that a directive granting European citizens in the whole of the European Union suffrage on the municipal level was accepted as part of the Maastricht Treaty. The Flemish movement warned already at that time against the dangers of this directive in Brussel and the Flemish border around it, but the Belgian government approved it anyway. The directive had to be accepted unanymously, so Belgium (or Flanders) could have vetoed it.
There are anly a few municipalities in the European Union where the political proportions could be changed by granting voting rights to European immigrants, and most of these municipalities lay in border regions. It is not expected to that it would in effect change the proportions drastically, if the European immigrants would bother to exercise their rights at all. Exceptions to this are Voeren, the region of Brussel-Capital and the Flemish municipalities in the border around it, in particular Kraainem, Wezembeek-Oppem, Linkebeek, Overijse, Hoeilaart and Tervuren. In Voeren, the influence of the Dutch immigrants could work in favour of the Flemish, giving them a majority again, but in all other cases, the Flemish majority will be lost or the Flemish minority further diminished. It is unknown though how many European citizens would go to the ballots, and how they would vote, but the French parties obviously are much more accessible to the immigrants than the Flemish, simply because most of the immigrants do understand French but not Dutch, Dutchmen being the exception.
The directive left some space to impose conditions to the suffrage, and Luxemburg used it to deprive European immigrants from it in municipalities with more than 15% immigrants, and France doesn't allow European immigrants to hold any political mandates. In the same spirit, the Flemish Parliament voted five conditions to the European suffrage in 1994, at the same time that the federal Parliament approved the directive:
Early 1997, Georges Clerfayt introduced a proposal to change Article eight of the federal Constitution to give the European immigrants voting rights, but none of the above mentioned conditions were copied. This resulted in have protest from Flanders, and on June 25, 1997, the Flemish Parliament voted a new motion reaffirming four of the five conditions; th fifth condition was withdrawn because it wouldn't be applicable in any municipality. Thanks to the efforts of a few Flemish parties, notably the Vlaams Blok and the VLD, the voting of Georges Clerfayt 's motion was postponed until fall 1997. It remains unclear though if any of the four conditions will be copied in the end.
If Flanders would have had a direct vote in 1991, none of the above would have been necassary. It could have vetoed the directive from the beginning, or imposed the conditions it wanted to right away. It could have imposed them in 1994 as well, and it certainly wouldn't have had to negotiate about them in 1997 with the Belgian and Walloon/French-speaking parties.