BASIC
INFORMATION
Full
Name: BELGIUM
Capital
Brussels
Largest city Brussels
Official language
Dutch, French, German
Government
Constitutional monarchy
Area 30,528 km²
Population
2005 est. 10,419,000
Currency Euro (EUR)
Time
zone (UTC +1)
Internet
TLD .be
Calling
code +32
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GEOGRAPHY
& BACKGROUND
The
Kingdom of Belgium (Dutch: Koninkrijk België;
French: Royaume de Belgique; German: Königreich
Belgien) is a country in northwest Europe
bordered by the Netherlands, Germany, Luxembourg
and France and is one of the founding and
core members of the European Union. Belgium
has a population of over ten million people,
in an area of around 30,000 square kilometres
(11,700 square miles).
Straddling
the cultural boundary between Germanic and
Romance Europe, it is linguistically divided.
Mainly two languages are spoken in Belgium:
Dutch is spoken by the 6 million people
in Flanders to the north, French by the
3.5 million Walloons in the south. The capital,
Brussels, is officially bilingual, while
the majority of its residents speak French.
Around 70,000 people live in the German-speaking
Community in the east of the country. This
linguistic diversity often leads to political
and cultural conflict and is reflected in
Belgium's complex system of government and
political history.
Belgium
derives its name from the Latin name of
the most northern part of Gaul, Gallia Belgica,
named after a group of mostly Celtic tribes,
Belgae. Historically, Belgium has been a
part of the Low Countries, which also include
the Netherlands and Luxembourg and were
covering a somewhat larger region than the
current Benelux group of states. From the
end of the Middle Ages until the seventeenth
century, it was a prosperous centre of commerce
and culture. From the sixteenth century
until the Belgian revolution in 1830, Belgium,
at that time called the Southern Netherlands,
was the site of many battles between the
European powers, and has been dubbed "the
battlefield of Europe"[1] or "the
cockpit of Europe".[1] More recently,
Belgium was a founding member of the European
Union, hosting its headquarters, as well
as those of many other major international
organisations, such as NATO.
Belgium,
with an area of 30 528 square kilometres
(11,787 sq. mi), has three main geographical
regions: the coastal plain in the north-west,
the central plateau, and the Ardennes uplands
in the south-east. The coastal plain consists
mainly of sand dunes and polders. Polders
are areas of land, close to or below sea
level that have been reclaimed from the
sea, from which they are protected by dikes
or, further inland, by fields that have
been drained with canals. The second geographical
region, the central plateau, lies further
inland. This is a smooth, slowly rising
area that has many fertile valleys and is
irrigated by many waterways. Here one can
also find rougher land, including caves
and small gorges.
Landscape in the Hautes Fagnes, in the ArdennesThe
third geographical region, called the Ardennes,
is more rugged than the first two. It is
a thickly forested plateau, very rocky and
not very good for farming, which extends
into northern France. This is where much
of Belgium's wildlife can be found. Belgium's
highest point, the Signal de Botrange is
located in this region at only 694 metres
(2,277 ft).
The
climate is maritime temperate, with significant
precipitation in all seasons (Köppen
climate classification: Cfb; the average
temperature is 3 °C (37°F) in January,
and 18° C (64 °F) in July; the average
precipitation is 65 millimetres (2.6 in)
in January, and 78 millimetres (3.1 in)
in July).[12]
Because
of its high population density and location
in the centre of Western Europe, Belgium
faces serious environmental problems. A
2003 report [13] suggested that the water
in Belgium's rivers was of the lowest quality
in Europe, and bottom of the 122 countries
studied
