If there is one subject about Belgium you’d not want to get into, it is politics. There is a very good reason for that: it is so very, very complex. For a country the size and population of Belgium, the fiendishly convoluted web that passes for a political system leaves many outsiders totally lost for words.
This is more than can be said for the endless number of people – politicians, pundits, media and others – who fill the TV screens, newsprint and social media with their opinions whenever an election comes around. One such occasion was Belgium’s local elections this past weekend.
It is worth remembering that this was the second big election in Belgium this year alone, following on from national and European elections earlier in 2024. In the run up to the elections on Sunday (13 October) towns the length and breadth of the country were taken over by the sight of hundreds and hundreds of posters featuring the many candidates standing in that particular commune or municipality.
If you’d just landed from another planet and had no idea what was going on, it wouldn’t be long before you did, such is the extent to which the many political parties go to get their candidates’ faces imprinted on the public psyche. It is probably necessary, first, to emphasise that these ‘local’ elections bear little or no resemblance to the equivalent in the UK (or many other countries, come to that).
Politics is close to home
The mayor, or burgomaster to give them their correct title, in a local Belgian town (even the smallest) possesses not insignificant powers. These include being in charge of the local police force, including the budget. But the said competences extend over a whole host of other important areas that directly impact everyday life.
Compared to countries like the UK and France, municipalities have much more clout in Belgium and decide on matters from land planning, public roads, cleanliness, public order and economic development to social aid and the municipal schools in their territory. This is due, of course, to the federal nature of the Belgian political system, whereby even a small village or hamlet gets to elect local representatives who enjoy the sort of powers their equivalent in the UK can only dream of.
This ‘bottom up’ approach has been resisted for a long time in places like the UK but is a fundamental aspect of how Belgium works and, it could be argued, a vital component in the nation’s cohesiveness.
Belgium, of course, is not alone in employing a federal system to run its affairs. In Switzerland, the same applies with the electorate having their say on many local, regional and national decisions. Indeed (unlike in Belgium), every year, the Swiss decide on issues that directly affect citizens, in hundreds of referendums.
Political education and engagement
From a young age, Belgians are taught that, yes, voting really does matter, and that the local level of Belgian politics has a big impact on streets, everyday lives and vital services. The message is that if you vote, you play a big role in choosing leaders and policies. This is almost part of Belgium’s DNA.
By casting a vote for a political party, voters decide on many of the things affecting day-to-day goings-on in neighbourhoods. The general idea is also that if you are voting for someone who is local (usually, the candidates work and live locally) – and who has certain powers at their disposal – you are more likely to feel ‘engaged’ with the political process.
This, it could be argued, is no bad thing at a time when public engagement with politics and politicians has fallen to such a low ebb.
In Belgium at the weekend, it was not just local communes holding elections. On the same day voters also elected representatives for provincial councils, the bodies responsible for tourism, culture and schools.
Five governments and a multitude of politicians
In the multi-layered tapestry that is Belgian politics, provincial councils are yet another tier of government. In fact, Belgium not only has five fully fledged governments – four regional and one federal – throughout Brussels, Wallonia, Flanders and its small German-speaking region in the east, but also no fewer than 31,806 politicians and an army of employees sustaining its offices and cabinets. England, by comparison, has 17,000 local councillors. In Brussels alone, there were some 3,809 candidates on 124 lists for Sunday’s local elections.
There are French or Dutch language lists and you are asked to choose between a party list vote or a preferential vote. Popular candidates who may be as low as 12 on a list can be voted into power.
Pascal Delwit, a professor in political science at Université Libre de Bruxelles (ULB), explains that, after the election, a council (commune) made up of the mayor and councillors is formed. The mayor is the equivalent of the prime minister and the councillors are the equivalent of the government ministers, says Delwit, comparing the local and the federal level.
Thomas Huddleston, who is from the US and moved to Belgium in 2006, believes that, instead of just complaining, people here can “actually get involved” and that developments like the 2016 terrorist attacks in Belgium, the UK’s decision to leave the EU and the presidency of Donald Trump have pushed people to become more politically engaged.
Last weekend’s Belgian election
So, how did all this play out in Sunday’s keenly awaited local elections?
Well, many predictions of a political upheaval did not really come to pass. The overall result was a bit of a hotchpotch, with gains for some, losses for others but no massive shocks. Arguably, the Greens Ecolo and Groen and the centrist party DéFI were the biggest losers. The centre-right parties MR and Les Engagés made significant gains. The Belgian Workers Party (PTB-PVDA) also gained a foothold in a few municipalities.
The biggest shock came in the East Flanders municipality of Ninove where the “Forza Ninove” list of Vlaams Belang (which has long advocated the breakup of Belgium and independence for Flanders) obtained an absolute majority of seats with 47.4%: 18 out of 35, enough to be able to take over the mayoralty without a partner – a first for the far-right in Belgium.
Voting in Belgium is, in theory, compulsory, and you run the risk of a fine if you fail to show up to vote. In practice, it is well known that enforcement of this rule by the authorities is inconsistent. One thing that at least some voters in Belgium seem to have in common with just about everywhere else is growing apathy towards politics. This was the first election where voting was not compulsory in Flanders, and many voters there did not show up. The participation rate is thought to be around 63%.
Since it became a federal system way back in 1970, Belgium has had layers of government. They are at just about every level: the national, municipal, regional, provincial and communal. The system invariably leaves the country facing months (sometimes years) of painfully slow negotiations in order to find a working coalition to run the place).
Looking to the future, a new study concludes that the system in Belgium really is just too complex to remain sustainable and needs changing. The study, by the Catholic University of Louvain and LIDAM (Leuven Institute of Data Analysis and Monitoring), cites the “weight, complexity and dysfunction of our political institutions”.
It concludes: “This multiplication of power levels and political structures entails significant costs and chronic inaction.”
