Municipalities with linguistic facilities
The municipalities with linguistic facilities or municipalities with facilities (Dutch: "faciliteitengemeenten", French: "communes à facilités") are a group of Belgian municipalities with special law provisions to protect rights of linguistic minorities.
Basically, inhabitants of these municipalities which do no speak the language of the Region, e.g. French-speakers in Flanders and Dutch-speakers in Wallonia, may obtain all administrative documents in their mother tongue.
List of municipalities with facilities
Municipalities in Flanders with French-language facilities
In Flanders there are two kinds of municipalities with facilities. Rim municipalities (randgemeenten in Dutch) are situated in the Flemish rim around the Brussels-Capital Region and form part of Flemish Brabant. The other municipalities are called language border municipalities (taalgrensgemeenten in Dutch) because they lie close to the border with Wallonia.
Rim municipalities
Wezembeek-Oppem and Kraainem are sometimes referred to as the "Oostrand" (literally "East rim" in English).
Language border municipalities
Municipalities in Wallonia with Dutch-language facilities
Municipalities in Wallonia with German-language facilities
Municipalities in Wallonia belonging to the German language region with French-language facilities
History
This is a stubby section - it needs clean up and more information
1958: Public unrest between French-speakers and Dutch-speakers during the Brussels World Exhibition, e.g. at Wemmel.
Before 1961: last linguistic census in Belgium.
1962 and August 2 1963's laws.
Flemish ministerial circular letters: Martens (?) and Peeters circular letters.
Lili Nabholz-Haidegger, a Swiss deputy, made a report on September 5, 2002 inviting Belgium to recognise the fact that there is a French-speaking minority in Flanders. This report was approved by the Council of Europe.
See also
