Government

For its first 164 years, Belgium was a highly centralised state, with power concentrated in the national government in Brussels. It did not work particularly well.

The linguistic divisions within the country prevented sensible decision-making and deadlock often ensued, even over relatively trivial matters. Eventually, a complex series of checks and balances were built into the system to prevent the possibility of the French-speakers lording it over the Flemish (or Dutch) speakers, or vice versa.

Even so, conflicts continued and during the 1980s, under two successive prime ministers, Wilfried Martens and Jean-Luc Dehaene, steps were gradually taken to turn Belgium into a federal state, with a substantial devolution of power to elected assemblies and governments representing the country’s three regions Flanders, Wallonia and Brussels and three language groups (Dutch, French and German).

The changes were inscribed in the new Belgian constitution, adopted in 1994, and came fully into effect in May 1995, when elections were held not only for the national Parliament, but for the assemblies of the regions and language communities.

Division of responsibilities 

Under this system, the national government is made up of a maximum of 15 cabinet ministers. The Prime Minister may come from any language group, but otherwise there must be parity between French- and Dutch-speakers. The government is responsible to the lower house of Parliament, the Chamber of Representatives, which has 150 members. There is also a Senate comprising 71 members, of whom 40 are directly elected, and the remainder indirectly elected or co-opted. The Senate has only limited powers, mainly concerned with constitutional revision and arbitrating between the different federal institutions.
The national government and Parliament are responsible for national defence, foreign policy, overseas aid, justice, law and order, currency, taxation and monetary policy, constitutional revision, economic and monetary union, social security, pensions, public health (shared), employment (shared), communications (shared) and immigration.

The regional assemblies are made up respectively of 118 members (Flanders) and 75 (Brussels and Wallonia), all directly elected. The regional governments are answerable to these assemblies, and are responsible for a wide range of powers.
These include: the environment, including housing and town and country planning; the economy, including employment (shared), energy and agriculture; transport and public works; foreign trade (shared); and finance of subordinate authorities, including the provincial and communal councils.

A question of language 

The official language of Flanders is Dutch, and that of Wallonia, French. Brussels is officially a bi-lingual region. There are special provisions for the Brussels region ensuring that its government must secure separate majorities within each language group in the regional assembly, and that ministers must come from both sides of the linguistic divide.

There is also a directly elected assembly (25 members) for the German-speaking Community in eastern Belgium. The assemblies for the French and Dutch speakers are made up, respectively, of the members of the Walloon and Flemish regional assemblies, together with a smaller number of representatives from Brussels. The language community governments, which answer to these assemblies, are responsible mainly for education, culture and linguistic policy.

Voting 

Voting in Belgium is obligatory. Elections are held under a system of proportional representation which ensures that governments are invariably coalitions. The most recent elections, held on June 13 1999, led to the defeat of the centre-left government of Jean-Luc Dehaene, and its replacement by a ‘rainbow’ coalition of Liberals, Socialists and Greens, led by Guy Verhofstadt, the first Liberal Prime Minister for more than 60 years.

Similar coalitions were elected for all the different regions and language communities. In the elections for the European Parliament, held on the same day, EU nationals resident in Belgium were entitled to vote, as they were in the communal elections in October 2000.

When it comes time to vote, it is not always easy to follow each party’s platforms. You can tap into their politics on-line, however, if you can understand French or Dutch.

Provincial and local government 

There are two lower levels of government in Belgium, consisting of 10 provincial and 589 communal councils, which will next be elected in October 2006. The provincial councils have very few powers, mainly in the fields of transport, public works, agriculture, the environment, youth and cultural affairs. The communes, however, play an important part in Belgian life, although their size varies enormously, with communal populations ranging from under 500 to over 300,000. Not only do they provide services of their own, but they act as the local agent for all the services provided by the national government, the regions and the language communities. The local mayor (or burgomaster) is an important public official. The main services provided by the communes are the police, the fire service, roads and public works, town and country planning, water supply, social assistance, libraries and, notably, primary and secondary education.