The head of the New Flemish Alliance (N-VA) and mayor or Antwerp, Bart De Wever | Nicolas Maeterlinck/AFP/Getty Flemish nationalists break cover on Belgium’s future The N-VA revives its separatist charge, ending a year of constitutional peace.

Belgium's largest party dusted off its plans to create a separate Flemish state, undermining a promise it made to coalition partners to bury its core message of splitting the country in two.

Bart De Wever, leader of the New Flemish Alliance (N-VA), last week tasked his parliamentary whip with devising a strategy on securing greater autonomy for Flanders after national elections in 2019, devolving powers to such an extent that Belgium will eventually cease to exist. Hendrik Vuye, a professor in constitutional law, will now have to work out how the party could dismantle Belgium's notoriously complex state structures.

The move has provoked anger among other Belgian parties, who fear a repetition of the political deadlock of 2010-2011, when it took 541 days to form a federal government.

It comes at a time when the government has advocated moving in the opposite direction: strengthening federal law enforcement powers in the wake of the terrorist scares that followed the Paris attacks, which raised awareness of the Flemish nationalists at national and international level.

But De Wever has another constituency to please: the N-VA's core voters, who back a separate Flemish state and have felt increasingly abandoned as the party successfully moved into the mainstream by smoothing off the rough edges.

The party's plans revolve around the notion of "confederalism" — which even Vuye admits is a hard concept to grasp.

The party's plans revolve around the notion of "confederalism" — which even Vuye admits is a hard concept to grasp. "The term has a different connotation in Belgium than abroad. We see it as an extended form of federalism," he told POLITICO. The idea is to have a union of states in which each part has extensive, independent powers over internal and external affairs.

"We're building on ideas agreed on by the party in 2014, and working to put these into concrete law proposals," Veerle Wouters, the party's specialist on Belgian finances, who will be working alongside Vuye, said. "We have to test the water and find public support for this notion of confederalism."

Joined together, pulling apart

Belgium has been moving in this direction for decades, shifting more and more powers from state to regional level, turning the country into an ever-looser union between Dutch-speaking Flanders and French-speaking Wallonia — with Brussels and the tiny German-speaking community caught in the middle.

Parties from across the linguistic divide work out compromises at the federal level on issues such as justice, foreign affairs and interior affairs, while regional governments control the likes of education, culture and integration policy. Many policy areas are, in typically Belgian fashion, subject to a complex power play between different levels of government.

The Flemish nationalists' pitch is, according to Wouters: "At the federal level, we will ask the question: What are we still willing to do together? In principle, all competences would move to the regional level, but there will be competences of which we'd argue it is better, or more efficient, to do them together."

And they won't shy away from radical methods, with Vuye suggesting they could even bypass the Belgian constitution. "Ideally, the Belgian constitution will be opened up for revision," he said, "but constitutional law isn't just about that text."

The party's aim is to dismantle the federal state so much that Belgium would cease to exist over time. "[The debate] will revolve around larger issues,” prominent party member Liesbeth Homans said in a recent interview, adding that this could cause Belgium “to disappear” by 2025.

The N-VA's backyard

With the appointment of Vuye as state reform czar, De Wever has cast doubt on the future of the federal government, of which the N-VA is the largest member. The N-VA want to devolve more powers, but its coalition partners do not.

The N-VA has been increasingly in the spotlight over the past year, with Interior Minister Jan Jambon the point-man in the fight against terrorism and Finance Minister Johan Van Overtveldt dealing with a shift in taxation policy.

The party had been building up to Vuye's appointment for weeks, putting statements in the press intended to appease traditional N-VA voters and frighten political opponents terrified that the country might fall apart.

A Flemish nationalist figurehead, Jean-Pierre Rondas of the online magazine Doorbraak.be, wrote in De Standaard: "If you're a Belgium-lover you'd better hope that the N-VA is part of a government: You're ensured a period of peace on the debate of the reform of the state."

De Wever's new frontman on constitutional affairs has three years to prepare the battleground on reform of the state, which is expected to play a key role in the 2019 election campaign.

De Wever's new frontman on constitutional affairs has three years to prepare the battleground on reform of the state, which is expected to play a key role in the 2019 election campaign.

"The awareness that a [new] reform of the state is coming is known by all political parties," Vuye said. "The question is when, and how big, this round will be. We have to prepare for that."

Bad memories

Vuye's mission means the end of a year of relative peace on the question of the country's future.

For other Belgian parties, it has uncomfortable echoes of 2010-2011. Then, the N-VA enjoyed electoral success but the party's demands to dismantle the state proved too much for its opponents. The result was political deadlock.

But De Wever in 2014 reconsidered his demands in exchange for a shot at power when he struck a deal with Prime Minister Charles Michel to put the push for state reform in the deep-freeze.

Michel's reaction to De Wever's move last week was to stress that there "would not be a reform of the state before 2019."

Elio Di Rupo, a former prime minister and current president of the French-speaking Socialists (PS), told public broadcaster RTBF: "The N-VA is holding its circus. We won't play along ... We don't want to enter these N-VA games ... The PS will preserve the country's existence."