BRUSSELS, Belgium - Belgium's 6.5 million Dutch and 4 million French-speakers are locked in an unhappy, quarrelsome union, and voters in a general election Sunday might well favour the prospect of a political divorce down the road.
A mainstream Flemish party that is expected to do well is invoking the concept of irreconcilable differences to seek a separation and, in time, take the country's Dutch-speaking Flanders region into the European Union as a separate country.
This is a nightmare scenario for the poorer Wallonia, Belgium's Francophone south, which greatly depends on Flemish funds.
Early elections were called after Premier Yves Leterme's five-party coalition fell apart April 26 in a dispute over a bilingual voting district.
That issue has pushed the New Flemish Alliance -- a tiny, centrist party only a few years ago -- into pole position: it is forecast to win a quarter of the vote in Flanders.
Its leader -- and perhaps Belgium's next premier -- Bart de Wever, 39, wants an orderly breakup of Belgium by shifting the national government's last remaining powers, notably justice, health and social security, to Flanders and Wallonia. That would complete 30 years of ever greater self-rule for the two regions.
The New Flemish Alliance wants Flanders to join the EU -- but there are no comparable separatist sentiments in Wallonia.
Finance Minister Didier Reynders, a Francophone Liberal, says the question facing Belgians is: "Do we still want to live together?"
Others favour no breakup either.
"We did a study of 10,000 people and found 84 per cent want the country reformed, but not broken apart," says Marianne Thyssen, a Dutch-speaking Christian Democrat.
Yet in Belgium just about everything -- from political parties to broadcasters to boy scouts and voting ballots -- already comes in Dutch- and French-speaking versions. Even charities like the Red Cross and Amnesty International have separate chapters.
Pierre Verjans, a University of Liege political scientist, says he feels "a sense of mourning going on. French-speakers now fear a Belgium without Dutch-speakers."
Breakup talk was long the realm of Flemish extremists.
De Wever's surprise high rating follows three years of utter stalemate. As governments worldwide tried to tame a financial crisis and recession, the four that led Belgium since 2007 have struggled with linguistic spats while the national debt ballooned.
In contrast to other recent European elections, the nation's finances have hardly been an issue in this campaign.
Since the 1970s, the two camps have been given self-rule in urban development, environment, agriculture, employment, energy, culture, sports and research and other areas. Today, Dutch speakers want autonomy in justice, health, taxation and labour matters.
Brussels is its own region and is officially bilingual. Yet over the years, Francophones from Brussels have moved in large numbers to the city's leafy Flemish suburbs, where they are accused of refusing to learn Dutch or integrate.
The divide goes beyond language.
Flanders tends to be conservative and free-trade minded. Wallonia's long-dominant Socialists have a record of corruption and poor governance. Flanders has half the unemployment of Wallonia and a 25 per cent higher per-capita income, and Dutch-speakers have long complained that they are subsidizing their Francophone neighbours.
But those in Wallonia don't want to join France and France has never expressed any interest in absorbing the region because of its high unemployment and other costs. France also does not to encourage separatism so regions like the French island of Corsica don't get their own separatist ideas.
