Belgium - Elections 2024

On 09 June 2024, voters elected members of the Chamber of Representatives of the federal parliament for a five-year term. The constitution provided citizens the ability to choose their government in free and fair periodic elections held by secret ballot and based on universal and equal suffrage. Voting in all elections was compulsory; failure to vote was punishable by a nominal fine. Recent Elections: Parliamentary elections held in 2019 were considered fair and free of abuses or irregularities.

The 150 members, representing 11 multi-member constituencies, were elected through a proportional representation system with open party lists, in which voters had the option to select preferred individual candidates from one party, regardless of their ranking on a list. Voter registration is passive and voter lists are compiled at the municipal level based on population data. Voting is compulsory for all citizens over 18 years of age, except for those deprived of their voting rights by an individual court decision.

Belgium is a federation of three regions (the Flemish, Walloon and Brussels-Capital regions), broadly encompassing, though not strictly overlapping with, three institutional communities corresponding to the languages predominantly spoken in each area (Dutch, French and German).1 The Federal State, among other functions, is charged with foreign relations, defence, justice, and internal affairs. The Regions and Communities have parliaments and governments led by minister-presidents governing aspects which fall under their respective competencies with the specific overlapping aggregations of the Regions and Communities resulting in varying representative and institutional arrangements.2 The Flemish and Walloon regions each comprise 5 provinces, and all 3 regions contain a total of 581 municipalities.

The king is the titular Head of State, while executive power is exercised by the prime minister and the government. Federal legislative power rests in a bicameral parliament made up of the Chamber of 150 members representing 11 multi-member constituencies and the 60-member Senate, both of which serve concurrent five-year terms. There were no significant changes in the human rights situation in the country during the year 2023. There were no reports of political prisoners or detainees. Significant human rights issues included credible reports of violence motivated by antisemitism. An independent press, an effective judiciary, and a functioning democratic political system combined to promote freedom of expression, including for the media.

The media environment is pluralistic with a wide variety of media outlets serving distinct linguistic audiences. All three Communities have a public broadcasting service, financed and supervised by the Community’s institutions, which provide free airtime for contestants, including in the form of debates. Freedoms of expression, press and information are guaranteed by the Constitution but federal law prohibits incitement to discrimination, promotion of racism and xenophobia, as well as denial of the genocide committed by the German national-socialist regime. Defamation, libel, insult and slander, including against public officials, are criminalized, contrary to international standards, and punishable with fines or imprisonment, but these sanctions are rarely applied.

Most political parties affirmed that they were free to conduct public campaigns but some raised varying opinions on the practice of exclusion of certain political parties from privately operated billboards, as well as attempts in municipalities to ban certain protests, particularly in the context of precluding racist speech. All parties stated that they would campaign on social media, though some had proposed banning micro-targeting and others introducing expenditure caps on advertising in social media, or the banning of campaigning in social media altogether, citing the vast differences in such spending between different parties.

All parties represented in the federal parliament receive public funding in proportion to the number of seats they hold as well as the number of votes received in the most recent federal elections. Private donations from individuals are limited and donations from legal entities are prohibited.

Even though Vlaams Belang (Flemish Interest) looked set to emerge triumphant in the June 9 election, leader Tom Van Grieken almost certainly won't become prime minister. Belgian government coalitions tend to be broad and complicated, reflecting the fragmented nature of a country with several parallel political systems. As well as Flanders and Wallonia, there is also the Brussels region, plus a tiny German-speaking community in the east.

Belgium, established almost 200 years ago as a mishmash federal state, is a tale of two countries: French-speaking Wallonia in the south and Dutch-speaking Flanders in the north (Brussels is its own little island in Flanders). And in the Francophone south, it is not the success of the far right that is the story. The vote in the linguistically divided country, which is split between Dutch-speaking Flanders in the north and French-speaking Wallonia in the south, was held on the same day as the European Parliament elections. The national vote was set to see a surge in support for far-right Flemish separatists, which could make it difficult to form a new government.

In theory Wallonia - once Belgium's industrial heartland but long in relative decline compared with populous, prosperous Flanders - should be fertile ground for nationalism. Emergent far-right parties have been plagued by internal divisions, a lack of charismatic leaders as well as a highly organized regional anti-fascist movement, quick to protest and disrupt any gathering. On Wallonia's public broadcaster RTBF, viewers almost never see far-right politicians making the case for closed borders or lamenting the downfall of Western civilization on live television. Most Belgian Francophone journalists enforce what's known as the "cordon sanitaire" (French for protective or sanitary barrier). Their colleagues to the north in Flanders do not - since the rule does not exist there. "The rule is that the far right should not be given a direct voice, a direct live access to media," explained Maria Udrescu, a journalist with the French-language Belgian daily newspaper La Libre. "You can quote far-right politicians for instance, but those quotes always have to be put in a context."

Is there no far right in Wallonia because there is the 'cordon sanitaire', or is the 'cordon sanitaire' easy to hold because there is no far right in Wallonia? For Benjamin Biard, a researcher at the Center for Research and Sociopolitical Information (CRISP) in Belgium, this partial media boycott is an important factor in the absence of a powerful far right in Wallonia, but it's certainly not the whole story. "It reduces visibility," he said. "A lot of people simply don't know about the parties. Because they do exist, trying to put forward candidates and run for election." If you look at survey data, many people in Wallonia appear to hold similar views to far-right voters in Flanders, France and Germany. There are plenty who think, for example, "that immigration increases problems of security or insecurity, that immigration impoverishes the country's economic and cultural life," said Biard.

Two Flemish nationalist parties were poised to win the most votes in Flanders, according to the latest opinion polls. More than 25% of the vote was expected to go to the far-right Vlaams Belang , which supports independence for Flanders. The victory of the hardline party pushing for Flanders to become an independent country has fueled talk that Belgium could be heading for a breakup. But other parties in Flanders, including the N-VA, have a long-standing agreement to keep the far right out of government in the region.

The right-wing nationalist New Flemish Alliance (N-VA) was projected to finish in first place with 17% of the vote, with the far-right Vlaams Belang securing 14% of the vote. "Our obituaries were written, but we won these elections," said N-VA leader Bart De Wever, who now looked a good bet to become Belgium's next prime minister. The N-VA and Vlaams Belang were also expected to finish in first and second place in the Flemish parliament. Parties in Flanders, including the N-VA, have a long-standing agreement to keep the far right out of government in the region. De Wever, who wanted to be the next prime minister, repeatedly insisted that he will not make a deal with Vlaams Belang this time either.

In Wallonia, a new self-declared "patriotic" party, the extreme right Chez Nous (Our Home) entered the scene in 2021, and won the initial backing of France's National Rally and Vlaams Belang. Chez Nous is reportedly very popular on social media, though it's hard to predict whether it will win any seats. According to one poll published by Le Soir newspaper in late 2023, about 1% of respondents in Wallonia and Brussels said they would vote Chez Nous.

The center-right Reformists Movement (MR) displaced the dominant Socialist Party as the first party in French-speaking Wallonia. While Dutch-speaking voters moved to the right, more of their French-speaking compatriots in Wallonia turned to theleft. The Socialist Party is expected to win as much as a quarter of the vote, but its long-standing dominance in French-speaking areas could be eroded by the far-left Workers' Party. According to the latest Ipsos poll, the Workers' Party would get close to 20% in the Brussels region and 15% in Wallonia. This means that its number of seats in the federal parliament would rise to 19, compared to 12 at present.

Combined with the 26 seats predicted for Vlaams Belang, this meant that some 45 seats will be taken by radical parties that are likely to be excluded from any government deal. The number of seats in the Belgian Federal Parliament is constitutionally set at 150. Poorer Wallonia, whose decline began in the 1960s as Flanders' economy boomed, traditionally leans toward national unity because the region would likely find it difficult to survive economically on its own.

Belgium's Prime Minister Alexander De Croo announced his resignation after disappointing federal and regional election results. "This is is a very difficult evening for us. We have lost this election," De Croo told supporters, wiping a tear from the corner of his eye. His Flemish liberal party, Open VLD, is projected to lose almost half its seats in the Chamber of Representatives. De Croo handed in his resignation to Belgium's King Philippe at the royal palace in Brussels. He was however set to remain acting prime minister for months while the coalition talks continue. Over the next few months, negotiations will aim to create a coalition government between the Dutch-speaking region's predominantly right-wing parties and the French-speaking south's more left-leaning parties.

The last time Belgium held a federal election, in 2019, it took 493 days for a new prime minister to be sworn in to lead a seven-party coalition government. The wait was even longer after the 2010 vote, when the country took 541 days to form a government, still a world record. Now there are fears that this record could be broken as support grows for the far right in Flanders and the far left in Wallonia.

Belgium must form a government to file a federal budget to the European Commission by September 20, 2024. Efforts to form a Belgian government have stalled as the politician appointed to reach consensus for a government coalition resigned from the mandate on 2 August 2024. Belgian politician Bart De Wever led the Flemish nationalist party, New Flemish Alliance, that won the most votes at the recent June general election, and was appointed the position of "formateur" to find consensus. Flemish media reporteds that before vacating the mandate, De Wever failed to find consensus among the five parties to agree to key Belgian policy planks, such as capital gains taxes.