Nothing is preventing the regions from working together right now, whether we are living in a federal or confederal country. But it simply is not working the way it is. And ever since the country was constructed it was slowly falling apart. First the people fought to get Dutch accepted (the language of the silent majority) and since then everything else slowly broke down in two language groups.

Now, you either can hope for something that will not happen (everybody speaks fluently Dutch and French and we share the same newspapers/media/influence) or you open your eyes and look at reality.

And you are right, a confederal Belgium or two separate regions (Flanders and Wallonia) would still have to agree on common interests. But they no longer have to disagree on everything else and be stuck in a status quo. The biggest problem Belgium has, is that it is bipolar and you cannot fix that easily.

And the politicians are not even trying. I would like to believe all the fairy tales of how things would work best, but if none of the political parties are interested and nobody can come up with proper solutions, then I think it is time to discuss what we want to do together and leave everything up to the regions.

Anything is better than this, but I do not expect you to believe me :-)