The Battle of Tourism Labels and Self-Determination in East-Belgium

Abstract

For over a century, nature tourism has been fundamental in constructing the common identity of the former districts of Eupen and Malmedy – once belonging to the German empire and annexed to Belgium after the First World War following the Treaty of Versailles. Recently, it has also become a battlefield for competing claims of self-determination between the German- and French-speaking communities of Belgium. The former districts of Eupen and Malmedy – located in Wallonia – not only compromise of nine German-speaking communes where the German-speaking community government exercises personal competences over the German-speaking inhabitants. They are separated from each other by two majority French-speaking communes, i.e. Malmedy and Waimes, where minority German-speaking inhabitants are protected under the Belgian constitution – ever since the devolution of the unitary Belgian state into a federal one with three language communities. Absent a defined territorial base from which the German-speaking community exercises power, the tourism label of Ostbelgien – literally East-Belgium – has become instrumental to carve out a united – continuous – territory to solidify its claims for regional autonomy. In response to those claims for self-determination, private initiatives supported by the Walloon government have sought to carve out the communes of Malmedy and Waimes when launching their new tourism label of Haute Amblève – _referring to the river which flows through those communes – linking them to the Walloon – French-speaking – heartland. This paper unpacks the geographical, historical and legal arguments that are at play in the battle of tourism labels consolidating the rights of self-determination of the inhabitants of pristine eastern Belgium.