Dutch-Belgian Enclaves Are Giant Jigsaw

Cross the road in this odd little town and the chances are you have passed from the Netherlands to Belgium, or perhaps the other way around.

Baarle-Nassau-Hertog, in the southern Dutch province of North Brabant near the border with Belgium, is a bewildering patchwork of intermingling Dutch and Belgian territories.

“We’re the world’s biggest jigsaw puzzle,” joked Yvo Kortmann, mayor of eight Dutch areas that collectively form Baarle Nassau. His Belgian colleague, Dr. Jan van Leuven, controls about 20 parcels of land of varying sizes dotted between the Dutch parts and known as Baarle Hertog.

The two municipalities have separate police, churches, schools and, most importantly for the local economy, shops.

Different Rules

Sunday in Baarle-Nassau-Hertog, as the 8,000 inhabitants call their town to help bemused outsiders, is rarely a day of rest because shops are open and Dutch consumers arrive in the thousands to buy cheap cigarettes and chocolate.

Sunday closing is the norm in the Netherlands but the village is exempted because Belgium has different rules. The exemption is one of many that allow the town to flourish as a territorial oddity and tourist attraction.

It all started with disputes between nobility over land ownership in the 12th Century, and the resulting puzzle remains to baffle officials and international lawyers today, even though the main Belgian-Dutch border was established in 1843.

House numbers are set on tiny metal national flags to give some indication where the borders run. Some houses have a border passing through them and one has two different numbers because the front door is right on the border.

Border Bemusement

“Some people sleep in Belgium and eat in the Netherlands without even leaving the house,” Kortmann said.

He and Van Leuven, who lives across the proper border in the Belgian town of Turnhout, shuttle between The Hague and Brussels to work out the many local problems.

One of the most recent trips was to try to persuade Belgium that it was time to accept the two groups’ garbage because it was cheaper than disposing of it in the Netherlands.

On a higher plane, both mayors are waiting for finance ministers to meet them to discuss value-added tax, which causes untold problems for village shopkeepers battling with the differing Belgian and Dutch rates.

Lots of Confusion

Villagers naturally intermarry across the national divide and this confuses matters further.

“My husband is Belgian, I’m Dutch. We live in Belgium and I work in the Netherlands. The tax men go crazy,” one resident said.

The village’s position is said to have attracted criminals keen to dart from one territory to the next to avoid arrest.

Unfortunately for them, it works the other way around, too.

In one celebrated case, a Dutch property consultant based in a Dutch part of town was wanted in the United States for involvement in a real estate swindle, but could not be extradited from his own country.

The lone Belgian policeman in Baarle Hertog obliged by arresting him as the man unwittingly crossed a border into a Belgian enclave. He was convicted in the United States and later returned to face trial in the Netherlands too.