The people of Belgium go to the polls on Sunday 9 June to elect a new federal parliament, regional and community assemblies and members of the European Parliament. Voting is compulsory in Belgium for over-18s, though few people are fined for not attending a polling place.
Belgians (and for the European Parliament Belgians and EU nationals who have registered for this ballot) vote to elect members of Belgian and European legislative bodies. There are no direct elections for executive bodies like the Flemish and federal governments that will have to rely on a majority of lawmakers in their respective assemblies.
Belgium has multi-member constituencies and uses a form of proportional representation (PR). For Sunday’s elections the D’Hondt system is used. The system gives a slight advantage to parties that collect large numbers of votes. It was conceived by the 19th century Belgian legal expert and scientist Victor D’Hondt and has been widely adopted. It is used in Belgium, but also in Northern Ireland, Bulgaria, the Dominican Republic, Finland and by the European Union.
On Sunday all eyes will be on the results of the federal elections, but also on the elections for the regional parliaments like the Flemish, Walloon and Brussels parliaments. The outcome will decide who runs Belgium and its devolved entities for the next five years.
The federal elections involve the election of the 150 members of the Chamber of Representatives, the lower house of the Belgian parliament. The upper house, the senate that only meets ten times a year, is no longer elected by voters, but by other lawmakers with many senators being dispatched by regional assemblies like the Flemish parliament. These senators are called 'community senators'.
The composition of the chamber of representatives is crucial because it determines who runs the country. The federal government, a body that by law must have an equal number of Flemish and Francophone ministers – the prime minister is usually ‘language neutral’ - needs to have the support of a majority of federal lawmakers.
Elections for the federal parliament are held in eleven multi-member constituencies. Each constituency corresponds with a Belgian province. The Brussels region also operates as a separate constituency. The number of MPs per constituency depends on its population.
Elections are organised using the list system. Each party proposes a list of candidates. Voters can cast a ballot at the top of the list indicating that they agree with the order of the list. You can also cast a preference vote beside the name of one or more candidates. This means you feel this candidate should have been ranked higher up the list increasing their chances of being elected. Preference votes have a modest impact on list rankings. You cannot cast preference votes for candidates on different lists but must stick to one party.
Lists feature ‘effective candidates’ but also ‘successor candidates’ that will replace an elected candidate if he or she resigns or does not take up their seat.
For the federal and all other elections Belgium operates a 5 percent election threshold that means that parties can only pick up seats once they have secured the support of 5 percent of the electorate in an individual constituency.
The upper house or the Belgian senate has 60 members: 50 are designated by regional assemblies. These 50 senators designate a further 10 senators.
Voters in Flanders and Brussels will on Sunday also elect the members of the one-chamber Flemish parliament across six constituencies: 118 MFPs are elected in Flanders. A further 6 are chosen by the people of Brussels, but these lawmakers cannot vote on regional issues like mobility, urban planning and the economy.
Other regional assemblies are also up for election on Sunday. The Brussels parliament has 89 members elected by the people of Brussels. The 75-member Walloon parliament is elected by the people of Wallonia, while German-speakers will elect the 25 members of the Parliament of the German-speaking Community.
There is also a Francophone community parliament that decides community issues like education and child care for the people of Wallonia and the Francophones of Brussels. It consists of all the members of the Walloon parliament plus 19 of the 72 Francophone members of the Brussels parliament. Who said Belgium was a complicated country?
The Walloon parliament is elected across 11 constituencies that largely correspond with the old federal districts used in earlier elections.
French-speakers designate 72 members of the Brussels parliament, while the Flemings in Brussels have a guaranteed representation of 17 seats.
The linguistic divide (for the federal level), use of the proportional representation system and the fragmentation of Belgian politics mean that governments in Belgium are usually coalitions. The people of Belgium will be looking forward to seeing who will govern them after the poll, but the process of forming a majority and striking a deal – especially at the federal level where any coalition agreement will have to bridge the gaps between the country’s two main communities – may take a long time! In 2010-11 Belgium was without a new government for 589 days. The government formation talks took a record 541 days. In the process Belgium bested a record set by Cambodia in 2003-2004. Of course, everybody hopes that new governments with full powers will be installed at all levels soon, but don’t worry, a caretaker administration will remain in place until then. It, however, cannot take any new initiatives bar in a crisis.
A novelty for European elections
Belgians and EU nationals who registered to vote here will elect 22 members of the 754-seat European Parliament. That’s up one from last time. There are 4 constituencies. The people of Flanders and Flemings in the capital forming one constituency elect 13 Flemish Euro MPs. The people of Wallonia and Francophones in the capital elect 8 Francophone Euro MPs. German-speakers elect one Euro MP in a separate German-speaking community constituency, the only instance in Belgium we believe where the first past the post system, popular in Anglophone countries, is used.
Voting is compulsory for all Belgians over 16 and EU nationals who registered to vote here for the European elections. Belgian lawmakers had wanted to involve more people, lowering the age to 16 down from 18 and making it voluntary for under 18s, but the courts ruled this would infringe the equality principle as over 18s would be obliged to vote and under 18s would not. In consequence voting is now mandatory for all over 16s.