Belgium put up for sale on eBay

Interested in a 180-year-old country with great beer, surrealist art, and female tennis players—and no functioning government? Boy, have we got a deal for you.

This week, a Belgian prankster put his country up on eBay, promising: “For Sale: Belgium, a Kingdom in three parts … free premium: the king and his court (costs not included).”  The joke was a creative protest of the country’s ongoing political crisis which Passport wrote about a few weeks ago.

Some readers thought our somewhat tongue-in-cheek post about the possibility of Flanders and Wallonia splitting was overblown, but Tuesday was Belgium’s 100th day without a government and the crisis appears no closer to resolution. The leading Walloon newspaper, Le Soir, says the crisis can only end in “divorce or separate bedrooms” for Belgium’s linguistic groups. The Economist has flat-out encouraged the country to call it quits. Even Belgium’s would-be prime minister, Yves Leterme, claims there’s nothing holding the country together but “the king, the football team, some beers.”

Is it only a matter of time before the Belgian crisis has its own logo and theme music on CNN? While the situation certainly appears more serious, there stills seems to be a certain amount of schadenfreude driving the growing media coverage (including ours) of Belgium’s possible breakup.