The Belgian Federal Renaming Programme, the government body responsible for the reclassification of Seattle and the pending Madrid file, has issued a formal statement distancing itself from what it calls “the American renaming programme,” following a week in which the United States renamed an airport, a bridge, and a four-mile stretch of road after its sitting president.
“We wish to clarify, for the record, that the two programmes are unrelated,” the statement reads. “The Belgian programme renames foreign cities after Belgian ones, pursuant to football results, following due parliamentary process. The American programme renames American things after one American, pursuant to nothing, following a process we have studied closely and can only describe as ‘I licked it, it's mine.’”
The statement, four pages long, devotes an entire section to what it calls “the doctrine of acquisition by proximity,” under which any object a head of state has touched, flown over, driven past, or landed on is deemed to bear his name. Belgian legal scholars consulted by the programme confirmed the doctrine has no basis in international law but noted it has “a certain playground coherence.”
“When a child licks a biscuit so that no one else will take it, we understand the impulse,” the statement continues. “When a state licks an airport, a bridge, a boulevard, and attempts to lick a performing arts centre in the same fiscal year, we are witnessing something else. We are not sure what. Our anthropologists are divided.”
The programme expressed particular professional concern about the airport. “An airport is renamed after a president as a memorial, by a grateful community, after the presidency has ended,” the statement notes. “Renaming it during the presidency, by legislation, with the trademark registered in advance by the president's own company, is not a tribute. It is inventory.”
The statement closes with an offer of technical assistance. “Belgium has renamed a foreign city of 750,000 inhabitants at zero cost, using one map edit and a press conference in a frituur. The American programme has spent $5.5 million renaming an airport the president already used. We are available for consultation. Our rates are reasonable and payable in respect.”
The Belgian programme confirmed that, in accordance with its founding principles, it has no plans to rename anything after any Belgian politician. “We checked whether anyone wanted this,” the statement notes in a footnote. “No one did. This is, we believe, the entire difference between our two countries.”