Municipalities with language facilities

All other municipalities – with the exception of those in the bilingual Brussels region – are monolingual and offer services only in their official languages, either Dutch or French.

[2] A municipality could ask the government to change its linguistic status by a royal decree only after a census showed a passage over the 30% or 50% threshold.

The German-speaking minority was mostly settled in the 'Eastern Cantons', several Prussian municipalities ceded to Belgium by the 1919 Treaty of Versailles and administered from 1920 to 1925 by a Belgian military High Commissioner.

The 1932 law was implemented only once, as the invasion of Belgium by Nazi Germany in 1940 prevented the organization of the decennial census, which was organized in 1947 and applied only on 2 July 1954, when an ad hoc law modifying the law of 28 June 1932 on the use of languages for administrative matters transferred three previously unilingual Flemish municipalities with language facilities to the French-speaking minority (Evere, Ganshoren, and Sint-Agatha-Berchem) to the bilingual region of Brussels, thus and introduced language facilities for the French-speaking minority in four previously unilingual Flemish municipalities (Drogenbos, Kraainem, Wemmel, and Linkebeek).

[citation needed] In accordance with Article 6 of the Act on linguistic arrangements in educational matters promulgated on 30 July 1963[3] and Article 3 of the Royal Decree of 14 March 1960 (implementing Article 4 of the law of 29 May 1959 to which it refers):[4] nursery and primary education may be organised in another national language than the official language of the linguistic area under the condition that: Since the 1988 reform which transferred educational matters from the federal government's level to the Communities’ level, the hosting Community is responsible for financing schools that meet the above criteria.

[citation needed] In the late 1990s, two Flemish ministers (Leo Peeters and Luc Vandenbrande) proposed a stricter interpretation of the above laws and instructed the Flemish municipalities with facilities for the French speakers to send all documents only in Dutch and to provide a French translated version only to people who would place an individual formal request which should be renewed for every document.

French speakers asked the Council of Europe to advise on the general situation of protection of national minorities in Belgium and petitioned for the Flemish Region to restore the previous practice.

French speakers have generally considered that this ruling was politically motivated and legally unsound; and have kept demanding that the Flemish interpretation of linguistic laws be softened and that Belgium ratifies the Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities as per the Council of Europe's recommendations (a demand presently blocked by most Flemish political parties).

As a result, there is now a strong and growing reaction in Flanders demanding that the current language facilities should be phased out, especially for the recent 'migrants' around Brussels.

French-speaking political parties, especially, protested against the Flemish ministerial circular letters from the socialist minister Leo Peeters (see supra).

At the same time, French speakers from the civil society like Professor Philippe Van Parijs and French speakers among the members of the Brussels Enterprises Commerce and Industry Association (BECI) made proposals meant at addressing these issues (among others) while addressing at the same time Flemish concerns and demand for respect of the Flemish 'principle of territoriality': In Flanders, there are two kinds of municipalities with facilities.

A survey published in Le Soir on 14 February 2005, indicated that in all six rim municipalities, the majority of the population was French-speaking (the study was unofficial since the public authorities refuse to undertake a census).