Brussels, historically a Dutch-speaking city, is officially bilingual (admittedly with a French-speaking majority now) but is also the capital of Dutch-speaking Flanders in addition to being the Belgian capital.
The problem has its roots in the sensitive area around Brussels where the French-speaking Walloons and the Dutch-speaking Flemings live side by side.
ECONOMIST: Rows over who should speak in which tongue have got worse
In Belgium, Dutch-speaking Flanders continues to demand ever-greater autonomy from the rest of the country.
Belgian political parties divided along French- and Dutch-speaking lines four decades ago, and most voting districts are split the same way.
Yes, if you have been listening recently to two senior Dutch-speaking politicians, one a Belgian, the other a citizen of the Netherlands.
Unemployment in Wallonia is more than double that of Flanders, and twice as many Walloons as Dutch-speaking Flemings are employed by the state.
Belgium is a supranational state, constructed by the European powers in 1830 and made up of two different nations, Dutch-speaking Flanders and French-speaking Wallonia.
Although no party straddles the divide between Dutch-speaking Flanders and French-speaking Wallonia, the new coalition will include socialists and liberals as well as Christian Democrats.
The plan proposed by Mr Vande Lanotte would see a further decentralisation of power to Belgium's regions, split between the Dutch-speaking Flemish population and French-speaking Walloons.
It was a wonderful and strange little Christmas party, with us speaking no Dutch and the nuns speaking no English, except for the tiny bit Mother Superior knew.
In the late 1830s, a bunch of doughty Dutch-speaking pioneers embarked on the Great Trek: a thousand-mile hike across desert and bush to escape the tyranny of British rule.
He has said he wants to turn Belgium into a "confederation, " in which the Dutch-speaking north has fiscal independence while continuing to share some areas, like defence, with the French-speaking south.
"I have no time for the Europe of the blue flag and the little stars, some elevated ideal, " said Mr Rutte, speaking to Dutch newspaper Algemeen Dagblad.
After a night of negotiations, five Dutch- and French-speaking parties agreed to form a government.
That is because public money is used to buy peace in Belgium, whose Dutch- and French-speaking halves increasingly loathe each other.
His Flemish Christian Democrats said the Dutch- and French-speaking Liberals had signed up to his reform programme, but that the French-speaking Christian Democrats had declined to do so.
By day, Brussels is more or less bilingual, hosting a third of a million Dutch- and French-speaking commuters from the prim suburbs, who fill the lion's share of well-paid graduate jobs.
One Bulgarian call-centre, for example, reckons that it takes only four months to teach German-speaking employees to answer calls in Dutch as well.
But, speaking on Thursday, a spokesman for the Dutch prime minister Mark Rutte suggested other EU nations were unlikely to allow any one country to opt out from "all kinds of arrangements" and the UK was likely to be "disappointed" if it went down that route.
The Dutch race is the second of three successive weekends of racing, and speaking after last weekend's accident, Rossi warned a crowded schedule was threatening riders' health.
BBC: SPORT | Motorsport | Motorbikes | Rossi aims to race despite crash
Speaking in the wake of the Italian elections on Monday, the Dutch minister said he is "fairly confident" that Italy will find a solution to its political problems as it has done in the past.
Yet the two have a lot in common, especially if you compare the southern Dutch with Belgium's Flemings (the country's northern, Dutch-speakers, whose half of the country is richer than the French-speaking Walloons' southern bit).
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