An Eye For An Eye Will Only Make The Whole World Blind – Part Nine
Baarle-Hertog
If you want to look at the wackiest border configuration of all time, then you need not go any further than the Belgian town of Baarle-Hertog in the province of Brabant, just north-west of Antwerp. Or is it the Dutch town of Baarle-Nassau? It’s all a bit of a mess.
The Belgian town consists of twenty-four non-contiguous parcels of land, 21 of which are completely surrounded by territory belonging to the Netherlands and three on what marks the border between the two countries. Just to add to the complexity, there are then seven Dutch areas within the Belgian enclaves within the Netherlands, six of which are situated in the largest Belgian enclave. Technically, these are known as counter-exclaves. I told you it was complicated but on a map it looks rather like a pleasing jigsaw puzzle.
Brits would not be surprised that this bizarre arrangement was ratified by a Treaty of Maastricht, this one concluded in 1843 and designed to settle the borders between the two relatively newly created countries once and for all. The determining principles as to where the border ran were geographic – the course of the river Meuse – and the religious affiliations of the communities, the Belgians being principally Catholic and the Dutch Protestant.
But the origins of the complexities presented to the diplomats by Baarle-Hertog dated back to the 12th century. The Lords of Breda and the Dukes of Brabant over time engaged in a series of mind-bogglingly complex treaties, agreements, sales, and land-swaps produced the patchwork of territories which the poor diplomats could see no other way round than to accept them as a fait-accompli. And so they remain to this day. In essence, if you were trying to find a scintilla of logic behind the disposition, the agricultural and urban areas tended to gravitate to Brabant (Belgium) whilst the rest were held by Breda (the Dutch).
Inevitably, such a bizarre arrangement caused a range of anomalies to develop, principally because Belgian laws were different in some respect from the Dutch equivalent. Take restaurant closing times, for example. There was a time when Dutch law required restaurants to close earlier than Belgian ones. So restauranteurs would, at the appointed hour, would shepherd their guests to tables on the Belgian side of the border, helpfully marked in coloured tiling which run along the streets, so that the carousers could continue to make merry undisturbed. These days closing times have been harmonised.
But firework regulations are still tighter in Holland than in Belgium. So in preparation for high days and holidays, those living in the Dutch exclaves would simply go to the Belgian area to get their hands on some pyrotechnics. Voting is compulsory in Belgium whereas the Dutch take a more laissez-faire approach to matters psephological. And should the occasion arise, if you are in Belgian territory you can build a house within 300 metres of a pig farm, something which is verboten in Holland.
There was a complex legal case involving a bank which had its front door in Dutch territory but its vault in Belgian. It was suspected of being used for money laundering and the Dutch couldn’t access the vault nor could the Belgians get into the bank. The matter was only resolved when authorities from the two countries had the brain wave of co-operating.
Bonkers as the arrangements seem, it all appears to work.
