How many regions are in Belgium?
Provinces of Belgium
During the second half of the 20th century, Belgium transitioned from a unitary state to a federal state with three Communities and three Regions. As part of the state reforms, the (bilingual) province of Brabant was split in 1995 three ways: into two (unilingual) provinces (Flemish Brabant and Walloon Brabant) and into the (bilingual) Brussels-Capital Region. (The Brussels-Capital Region does not belong to any province, is not a province, and does not contain any provinces.) The two new Brabant provinces became part of the Flemish Region and the Walloon Region respectively. The remaining eight provinces became part of these regions as well, so the Flemish Region and the Walloon Region each contain five provinces.
Judiciary of Belgium
The territory of Belgium is subdivided into 5 judicial areas (Antwerp, Ghent, Brussels, Mons and Liege), 27 judicial arrondissements and 225 judicial cantons.
Provinces of Belgium
The executive branch was previously called the "Permanent Deputation". In the Flemish Region it is now simply called the Deputation () and it consists of the Governor and six Deputies elected by the Provincial Council from among its members. Following the next 2018 election, there will be one Deputy less, i.e. five Deputies. In the Walloon Region it is called the Provincial College () which consists of the Governor and four to five Deputies (depending on the number of inhabitants of the province) elected by the Provincial Council from among its members.
List of elections in Belgium
Regional elections (five-year terms, concurrently with European elections) are elections to the different parliaments of communities and regions: the Flemish Parliament, the Walloon Parliament, the Parliament of the Brussels-Capital Region, the Parliament of the German-speaking Community and indirectly the Parliament of the French Community and the three assemblies of the community commissions in Brussels.
List of National Roads in Belgium
The first network consists of national roads, each starting from the capital Brussels and forming a clockwise star.
The second network groups the national roads that are linked to major cities and towns of Belgium, excluding Brussels.
The third network is composed of provincial national roads. The first digit corresponds to a province—from 1 to 9—based upon the old provinces and in alphabetical order in French, thus: Province of Antwerp; Province of Brabant; Province of West Flanders; Province of East Flanders; Province of Hainaut; Province of Liège; Province of Limburg; Province of Luxemburg; and Province of Namur.
Due to linguistic differences, the national road N58 took more than twenty years to build. It does not actually run from Dottignies to Armentières as anticipated because the road is split into two sections: the first stretches from Armentières in France up to Menen where it joins onto the A19 motorway; the other part starts in the village of Dronkaard to the southeast of Menen, and ends in the village of Dottignies.
Belgian Federal Parliament
The number of seats in the Chamber is constitutionally set at 150 elected from 11 electoral districts. The districts are divided along linguistic lines: 5 Flemish (79 seats), 5 Walloon (49 seats), and the bilingual district of Brussels-Halle-Vilvoorde (22 seats).
The districts are the provinces, except for the districts of Leuven (part of Flemish Brabant) and Brussels-Halle-Vilvoorde. Each district is given a number of seats proportional to its population (not number of voters) ranging from 4 for Luxembourg to 24 for Antwerp.
All districts have an electoral threshold of 5%, except for Brussels-Halle-Vilvoorde and Leuven; all districts are monolingual, except for Brussels-Halle-Vilvoorde which encompasses both the 19 bilingual municipalities from the Brussels-Capital region and some 35 Dutch-speaking municipalities in Flemish Brabant, incl. 7 with language facilities for French-speakers.
History of Flanders
The contemporary territory of Flanders (i.e., the Flemish Region as the Dutch-speaking part of the Kingdom of Belgium) contains within it the core of the old county, West Flanders and East Flanders, plus three more provinces to the east which were not originally part of Flanders. These are the provinces of Antwerp and Flemish Brabant which were historically part of the Duchy of Brabant, and the province of Belgian Limburg, which was part of the Prince-Bishopric of Liège. (The city of Brussels, historically part of Brabant, is now politically part of the Flemish Community but not of the Flemish Region.)
Walloons
This is complicated by the federal structure of Belgium, which splits Belgium into three communities with the privilege of using their own tongues in official correspondence, but also into three autonomous regions. The communities are: French community (though not Walloon, but sometimes controversially called "Wallonia-Brussels"), Flemish community (which uses Dutch), and German-speaking community. The division into political regions does not correspond with the communities: Flemish Region, Walloon Region (including the German community but generally called Wallonia), and the bilingual (French-Dutch) Brussels-Capital Region.
Brussels Periphery
The Brussels Periphery (, i.e. the "Brussels Rim", or "Vlaamse Rand", i.e. the "Flemish Rim", or just "De Rand", "the Rim"; ) refers to 19 Flemish municipalities that encircle the Brussels-Capital Region. The Brussels Region is an enclave of the province of Flemish Brabant.
Communities, regions and language areas of Belgium
The Walloon Region or Wallonia ( or ) occupies the southern part of Belgium. It has a surface area of , or 55.18% of Belgium, and is also divided into 5 provinces which contain a total of 262 municipalities. Its capital is Namur.
Belgium
Belgium is one of the six founding countries of the European Union and hosts the official seats of the European Commission, the Council of the European Union, and the European Council, as well as a seat of the European Parliament in the country's capital, Brussels. Belgium is also a founding member of the Eurozone, NATO, OECD, and WTO, and a part of the trilateral Benelux Union and the Schengen Area. Brussels hosts several of the EU's official seats as well as the headquarters of many major international organizations such as NATO.
Geography of Belgium
Belgium has an area of 30,528 square kilometers, with 16,844 square kilometers for Wallonia, 13,522 square kilometers for Flanders and 161 square kilometres for the Brussels Capital Region. By provinces, the area is distributed as such:
Cantons of Belgium
A judicial canton (, ) is a group of municipalities over which a single Justice of the Peace has jurisdiction. A judicial arrondissement consists of all judicial cantons on its territory. There are 225 judicial cantons in Belgium. Most judicial cantons cover multiple municipalities; however cities are often divided into more than one judicial canton. Antwerp, for instance, is divided into 12 judicial cantons.
Municipalities of Belgium
The three Regions can amend or replace the existing legislation on the municipalities, most notably the New Municipal Law. In the Flemish Region the Municipal Decree of 15 July 2005 applies. In the Walloon Region the Code of Local Democracy and Decentralization applies. In the Brussels Region several provisions of the New Municipal Law have been modified by ordinance, such as the Ordinance of 17 July 2003. The legal framework in the three Regions is still relatively similar, but that could change in the future.
Communities, regions and language areas of Belgium
Lesser subnational entities include the intra-municipal districts (which currently only exist in the city of Antwerp), the administrative, the electoral and the judicial arrondissements, police districts, as well as the new inter-municipal police zones (lower level than the police districts).
Belgian Provincial Leagues
As such, there are nine leagues at the first level of the provincial leagues, namely the leagues of the provinces of Antwerp, East Flanders, Hainaut, Liège, Limburg, Luxembourg, Namur, West Flanders and finally the "Brabant" division containing teams from the Brussels Capital Region, Flemish Brabant and Walloon Brabant.
Flemish Brabant
Flemish Brabant ( , ) is a province of Flanders, one of the three regions of Belgium. It borders on (clockwise from the North) the Belgian provinces of Antwerp, Limburg, Liège, Walloon Brabant, Hainaut and East Flanders. Flemish Brabant also surrounds the Brussels-Capital Region. Its capital is Leuven. It has an area of 2,106 km² which is divided into two administrative districts ("arrondissementen" in Dutch) containing 65 municipalities.
Outline of Belgium
Belgium
Postal codes in Belgium
Postal codes in Belgium are numeric and consist of 4 numbers. The first digit indicates the province (except for the 3xxx numbers that are shared by the eastern part of Flemish Brabant and Limburg, the 6xxx that are shared between the Hainaut and Luxembourg province, and the 1xxx that are shared by the Brussels Capital Region, the western part of Flemish Brabant and Walloon Brabant). The more zeros though the higher the number of inhabitants of that city in the province. For example: Brugge is the capital and largest urban centre of the coastal province of West Flanders so it gets the 8000 code, the second city is Kortrijk and gets 8500. 
When writing the address, the postal code is put in front of the town name.
Belgians
Belgians (, , ) are people identified with the Kingdom of Belgium, a federal state in Western Europe. As Belgium is a multinational state, this connection may be residential, legal, historical, or cultural rather than ethnic. The majority of Belgians, however, belong to two distinct ethnic groups or "communities" ( or ) native to the country, i.e. its historical regions: Flemings in Flanders, who speak Dutch and Walloons in Wallonia who speak French or Walloon. There is also a substantial Belgian diaspora, which has settled primarily in the United States, Canada, France and Netherlands.
Partition of Belgium
Four theoretical scenarios are usually considered in the event that a partition of Belgium would occur: remaining with Wallonia, sovereign statehood, reattachment to Germany, or attachment to Luxembourg. The community is part of the Walloon province of Liège and, per se, would stay so in case of partition. This status quo solution is the most probable, although it is uncertain whether or not the German-speakers could maintain their cultural and political rights in the long term in an otherwise monolingual francophone country. The other three possibilities would become realistic only if Wallonia were to seek unification with France. Since the community used to be part of Germany, "reunification" seems to be the logical step to take (the region borders the German states of North Rhine-Westphalia and Rhineland-Palatinate). However, opponents to this idea argue that the autonomy of the region would be lost in Germany as much as it would in France. Therefore, and because of the strong cohesion of the regional population, some would prefer the creation of an independent state. They argue that the new country would, for example, be five times as large and more than twice as populous as Liechtenstein. Opponents say this would lead to the creation of a new undesired tax haven. The last option would be to merge with Luxembourg. Supporters of this scenario underline that many from St. Vith currently commute to Luxembourg and that a union with the rich Grand Duchy would be economically profitable. However this would leave the northern part of the community around Eupen as an exclave of Luxembourg. Minister-president Karl-Heinz Lambertz has been said to have supported such a project. He, however, has refuted this and has committed himself to the continued union with Belgium. In an interview with the German TV-channel ZDF in February 2011, he listed the four aforementioned options concerning the future of the German-speaking Community.
Geography of Belgium
Belgium is a federal state located in Western Europe, bordering the North Sea. Belgium shares borders with France (556 km), Germany (133 km), Luxembourg (130 km) and the Netherlands (478 km). Belgium comprises the regions of Flanders, Wallonia and Brussels.
2019 Belgian regional elections
The following timetable is fixed for the simultaneous European, federal and regional elections:
All 124 members of the Flemish Parliament will be elected. The five Flemish provinces (West Flanders, East Flanders, Antwerp, Flemish Brabant and Limburg) each are a constituency, plus the Brussels-Capital Region where those voting for a Dutch-language party can also vote in the Flemish election.
List of windmills in Belgium
This is a list of windmills in Belgium.
Belgium is divided into three regions, two of which are subdivided into five provinces each.
Provinces of Belgium
The medieval Low Countries, including present-day Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg, as well as parts of modern Germany and France, comprised a number of rival and independent feudal states of varying sizes. These each had their own identities and governments, though in the early modern period almost all the Belgian states became part of larger entities (the Seventeen Provinces (1549-1581) and the Southern Netherlands (after 1581)). Prominent early states in the area of modern Belgium included the Duchy of Brabant, the County of Flanders, the Prince-Bishopric of Liège and the Duchy of Luxembourg; smaller ones included the County of Hainaut, the Duchy of Limburg and the County of Namur, though there were other small states as well.
When these territories were annexed by France in 1795, they were reorganised into "départments"; the borders were redrawn and the historical names were replaced by names of geographical features (generally the main river of the area).
At the end of French rule and the creation of the United Kingdom of the Netherlands in 1815, the departmental territories were generally retained but were renamed into provinces and the historical names returned. At the time of the independence of Belgium from the Netherlands in 1830, Belgium's territory simply consisted of the existing nine southern provinces. The first article of the Belgian Constitution said: "Belgium is divided into provinces. These provinces are Antwerp, Brabant, West Flanders, East Flanders, Hainaut, Liège, Limburg, Luxembourg, Namur, except for the relations of Luxembourg with the German Confederation." As such, each of the modern provinces of Belgium (with the exception of Antwerp) takes its name from one of the medieval predecessors, whereas the borders largely correspond to those of the French departments, which in most cases differ substantially from the historical entities.
Brussels and the European Union
Belgium operates a complex federal system between the two main groups: Flemish and Walloons. There's a division of Belgium into three regions, where Brussels-Capital Region is an independent region, next to Flanders and Wallonia. The regions are mostly responsible for the economy, mobility and other territory-related matters. But there's also a division of Belgium into three communities: the Flemish Community, the French Community and the German-speaking Community. These communities are responsible for language-related matters like culture or education. Brussels doesn't belong to any community, but has a bilingual status. So the Brussels inhabitants may enjoy education or cultural affairs or education organised by the Flemish and/or the French community.
Flanders
Flanders, despite not being the biggest part of Belgium by area, is the area with the largest population (68.5%). 7,876,873 out of 11,491,346 Belgian inhabitants live in Flanders or the bilingual city of Brussels. Not including Brussels, there are five modern Flemish provinces.
Regions and provinces of Belgium
Regions and provinces of Belgium may refer to:
Constitution of Belgium
Article 2 divides Belgium into three communities: the Flemish Community, the French Community and the German-speaking Community, whereas Article 3 divides Belgium into three regions: the Flemish Region, the Walloon Region and the Brussels Region. Article 4 divides Belgium into four language areas: The Dutch language area, the French language area, the bilingual (French and Dutch) area of Brussels-Capital and the German language area. Each municipality of the Kingdom is part of one of these four language areas only. The borders of the language areas can be changed or corrected only by a law supported by specific majorities of each language group of each Chamber.
Arrondissements of Belgium
Belgium, a federalized state, geographically consists of 3 regions, of which only the Flemish Region and the Walloon Region are subdivided into five provinces each; the Brussels-Capital Region is neither a province nor is it part of one.
Communities, regions and language areas of Belgium
The Flemish Region has no institutions on its own. Upon the creation of the provisional regions in 1974, a provisional Flemish Regional Council was installed with Mechelen as seat. However, with the definitive regions in 1980, its competencies were transferred to the Flemish Community in order to have unified Flemish institutions that combine both regional and community competencies, namely the Flemish Parliament and Flemish Government and its administration. Regional laws (called decrees) do however need to mention whether they are applicable to the community, the region or both.
Belgium
Belgium, officially the Kingdom of Belgium, is a sovereign state in Western Europe. It is bordered by the Netherlands to the north, Germany to the east, Luxembourg to the southeast, France to the southwest, and the North Sea to the northwest. It covers an area of and has a population of more than 11.4 million. The capital and largest city is Brussels; other major cities are Antwerp, Ghent, Charleroi and Liège.
Belgium
Belgium shares borders with France (), Germany (), Luxembourg () and the Netherlands (). Its total surface, including water area, is 30,528 square kilometres from which land area alone 30,278 km. It lies between latitudes 49°30 and 51°30 N, and longitudes 2°33 and 6°24 E.
Belgium has three main geographical regions; the coastal plain in the northwest and the central plateau both belong to the Anglo-Belgian Basin, and the Ardennes uplands in the southeast to the Hercynian orogenic belt. The Paris Basin reaches a small fourth area at Belgium's southernmost tip, Belgian Lorraine.
History of Belgium
At the end of 2011, following the longest political crisis in Belgium's contemporary history, a constitutional accord between the four main political families (socialists, liberals, social-Christians, ecologists), but excluding the Flemish nationalists, ushered in the sixth state reform which provided for major institutional changes and additional transfers of competences from the federal level to the Communities and the Regions. Among other changes, the Senate ceased to be directly elected to become an assembly of regional parliaments, the Brussels-Capital Region was granted constitutive autonomy, and the Regions received economic, employment and family welfare competences as well as greater fiscal autonomy.
Telecommunications in Belgium
Postal codes in Belgium consist of four digits which indicate regional areas, e.g. "9000" is the postal code for Ghent.
List of National Roads in Belgium
Most of the roads of the third and fourth networks have a first digit that identifies the province: N1xx for Antwerp, N2xx for ex Brabant, N3xx for West Flanders, N4xx for East Flanders, N5xx for Hainaut, N6xx for Liège, N7xx for Limburg, N8xx for Luxemburg and N9xx for Namur. This first digit corresponds with the NIS code of the provinces.
Limburg (Belgium)
Limburg (, ; Dutch and Limburgish: "Limburg"; ) is a province in Belgium. It is the easternmost of the five Dutch-speaking provinces that together form the Region of Flanders, one of the three main political and cultural sub-divisions of modern Belgium.
Partition of Belgium
Similar to a "Greater Brussels" region, the electoral district of Brussels-Halle-Vilvoorde consisted of Brussels and 35 surrounding municipalities in Flanders. Prior to its dissolution, this district was the last remaining entity in Belgium that did not coincide with provincial borders, and as such had been deemed unconstitutional by the Belgian Constitutional Court. The district was a conflict issue for several years, and a major political problem in the cabinet formation crisis of 2007–2008. In July 2012, following the 2010–2011 Belgian government formation, Brussels-Halle-Vilvoorde was split into two parts as part of the sixth Belgian state reform.Another proposition is the establishment of a condominium of the Flemish and the French-speaking Communities of Brussels, where both sides would govern Brussels together for national and international issues. For all local territorial policies, Brussels would be fully autonomous. For all 'non-territorial' public services (as culture, welfare and education), each community would enjoy autonomy. This idea is in general popular among Flemish politicians, such as socialist politician Louis Tobback and nationalist Bart De Wever.
Partition of Belgium
As no census exists, there are no official statistics on Belgium's three official languages or their dialects. Various criteria, including the language(s) of parents, of education, or the second-language status of foreign born, may affect suggested figures. An estimated 59% of the Belgian population speaks Dutch (often colloquially referred to as "Flemish"), and French is spoken by 40%. Total Dutch speakers number 6.23 million, concentrated in the northern Flanders region, while French speakers comprise 3.32 million in Wallonia and an estimated 870,000 (85%) of the officially bilingual Brussels-Capital Region. The German-speaking Community is made up of 73,000 people in the east of Wallonia; around 10,000 German and 60,000 Belgian nationals are speakers of German. Roughly 23,000 more German speakers live in municipalities near the official Community.
The Capital Region having bilingual status obliges its authorities to attend to people and organisations in French or Dutch language as these prefer, and to show street names in both languages on the plates, but does not allow a bilingual school as education belongs to either the French Community or the Flemish one. Geographically, it is an enclave in the Flemish Region, though near Wallonia. Constitutionally, it is a politically distinct Region, while within its boundaries both the Flemish and French Communities exercise their authority. Historically, the local language of Brussels was Dutch, and Dutch remained the vernacular language of a majority of inhabitants until around 1950.
Belgium–Kurdistan Region relations
Belgium–Kurdistan Region relations are bilateral relations between Belgium and Kurdistan Region. Belgium has no representation in Kurdistan Region and the latter has no representation in Belgium. Kurdistan Region's representation to the European Union is located in the Belgian capital of Brussels. Belgium has a military presence in Kurdistan Region with circa 30 soldiers training Kurdish soldiers (Peshmerga). In 2017, Kurdish President Massoud Barzani visited Belgium and met with Minister-President Geert Bourgeois of the federal region of Flandern, where the latter stated that the upcoming Kurdish referendum in September 2017 should be respected and Deputy Prime Minister of the federal government in Belgium Jan Jambon has stated that all nations have the right to self-determination.
Politics of Belgium
The 1970 constitutional revision did not finally settle the problem, however. A controversial amendment declared that Belgium consists of three cultural communities (the Flemish Community, the French(-speaking) Community and the German-speaking Community) and three economic regions (Flanders, Wallonia, and Brussels) each to be granted a significant measure of political autonomy. It was not until 1980, however, that an agreement could be reached on how to implement this new constitutional provision.
Partition of Belgium
The territories corresponding to the modern Belgian, Dutch and Luxembourgish states are collectively called the Low Countries. They emerged at the end of the Middle Ages as a set of more or less independent fiefdoms loosely linked to the Kingdom of France and the Holy Roman Empire. The southern part of this region—the Southern Netherlands, the Prince-Bishopric of Liège, the Imperial Abbey of Stavelot-Malmedy and the Duchy of Bouillon—was partitioned both politically (into many fiefdoms), and linguistically (into the Romanic and Germanic Sprachräume). The feudal borders did not match the linguistic borders, and some fiefdoms were divided into Francophone and Germanic regions. However, the ruling aristocracy, which usually spoke languages other than the population, did not much bother about these language-related disparities. After the 1581 secession of the Dutch Republic in the northern Low Countries, French progressively emerged in the Southern Netherlands under the influence of the Habsburg nobility and, later, of the French invasions, as the upper class language, not only at the court but also in the administration and in the political circles.
List of municipalities of Belgium
The list of municipalities of Belgium is a survey of the following lists because Belgium is divided in three regions:
Elections in Belgium
Number of seats by constituency:
Since the 1993 state reform, the Parliaments of the federated entities (Communities and Regions) are directly elected with elections always coinciding with European Parliament elections (thus with fixed terms of five years). Previously, these Parliaments consisted of the federal representatives elected in the respective region.
Greater Region
The Greater Region (, , ) is the area of Saarland, Lorraine, Luxembourg, Rhineland-Palatinate, Wallonia and the rest of the French Community of Belgium, and the German-speaking Community of Belgium. It is "not" identical with the SaarLorLux Euroregion, despite being in the same territory.
Provinces of the Netherlands
On 1 January 1796, under the Batavian Republic, Drenthe and Staats-Brabant became the eighth and ninth provinces of the Netherlands. The latter, which had been known as Bataafs Brabant (English: Batavian Brabant), changed its name to Noord Brabant, North Brabant, in 1815 when it became part of the United Kingdom of the Netherlands, which also contained (then) South Brabant, a province now in Belgium. This new unified state featured the provinces in their modern form, as non-autonomous subdivisions of the national state, and again numbering 17, though they were not all the same as the 16th century ones. In 1839, following the separation of Belgium, the province of Limburg was divided between the two countries, each now having a province called Limburg. A year later, Holland, the largest and most populous of the Dutch provinces, was also split into two provinces, for a total of 11. The 12th province to be created was Flevoland, consisting almost entirely of reclaimed land, established on 1 January 1986.
Belgium
The Belgian economy is heavily service-oriented and shows a dual nature: a dynamic Flemish economy and a Walloon economy that lags behind. One of the founding members of the European Union, Belgium strongly supports an open economy and the extension of the powers of EU institutions to integrate member economies. Since 1922, through the Belgium-Luxembourg Economic Union, Belgium and Luxembourg have been a single trade market with customs and currency union.
Belgium was the first continental European country to undergo the Industrial Revolution, in the early 19th century. Liège and Charleroi rapidly developed mining and steelmaking, which flourished until the mid-20th century in the Sambre and Meuse valley and made Belgium among one of the three most industrialized nations in the world from 1830 to 1910. However, by the 1840s the textile industry of Flanders was in severe crisis, and the region experienced famine from 1846 to 1850.
List of most common surnames in Europe
Belgium is a European nation composed of three main regions: Flemish Region (Flanders), Walloon Region (Wallonia), and Brussels-Capital Region. The Flemish region has a Dutch language tradition, while the Walloon region has a French language tradition. These different linguistic backgrounds are reflected in differing frequencies of surnames, as shown in the table below. (data from 1 January 2008; total population: 10,666,866)
Belgian Congo
The territorial service was the true backbone of the colonial administration. The colony was divided into four provinces (six after the administrative reforms of 1933). Each province was in turn divided into a few districts (24 districts for the whole Congo) and each district into a handful of territories (some 130–150 territories in all; some territories were merged or split over time). A territory was managed by a territorial administrator, assisted by one or more assistants. The territories were further subdivided into numerous "chiefdoms" ("chefferies"), at the head of which the Belgian administration appointed "traditional chiefs" ("chefs coutumiers"). The territories administered by one territorial administrator and a handful of assistants were often larger than a few Belgian provinces taken together (the whole Belgian Congo was nearly 80 times larger than the whole of Belgium and was roughly twice the size of Germany and France combined). The territorial administrator was expected to inspect his territory and to file detailed annual reports with the provincial administration.
Flamenpolitik
Von Bissing convened a commission to organise the division of the country, and in a decree issued on March 21, 1917, separated Belgium into two administrative areas: Flanders and Wallonia. A Flemish government, known as the Raad van Vlaanderen or RVV, was established. Taking into account the 1912 decision by Walloon nationalists to recognize Namur as the most central city of Wallonia, he established the Walloon administration there. Wallonia then consisted of four southern Belgian provinces and one part of the province of Brabant: the district of Nivelles, realizing also another revendication of the Walloon movement: the creation of the Walloon Brabant. The Flemish region had Brussels as its capital, and was made up of the four northern provinces of Belgium, as well as the districts of Brussels and Leuven. This was the first attempt at dividing Belgium along linguistic lines.
Elections in Belgium
The Flemish and Walloon Region both have five provinces each. These ten have directly elected provincial councils. Both regions decreased the number of provincial councillors starting with the 2012 elections.
2014 Belgian federal election
Representatives elected from the five Flemish provinces, Antwerp (24), East Flanders (20), Flemish Brabant (15), Limburg (12) and West Flanders (16), automatically belong to the Dutch-speaking language group in parliament, whereas those elected from the five Walloon provinces, Hainaut (18), Liège (15), Luxembourg (4), Namur (6) and Walloon Brabant (5), form the French-speaking language group. The 15 members elected in Brussels may choose to join either group, though de facto only French-speaking parties reach the threshold.
Belgium
Belgium is home to two main linguistic groups or "Communities": the Dutch-speaking, mostly Flemish Community, which constitutes about 59 percent of the population, and the French-speaking Community, which comprises about 40 percent of all Belgians. A small German-speaking Community, numbering around one percent, exists in the East Cantons. The Brussels-Capital Region is officially bilingual (French and Dutch), although French is the dominant language. Belgium's linguistic diversity and related political conflicts are reflected in its political history and complex system of governance, made up of six different governments.
Chamber of Representatives (Belgium)
Article 62 of the Belgian Constitution fixes the number of seats in the Chamber of Representatives at 150. There are 11 electoral districts, which correspond with the ten Provinces (five Dutch- and five French-speaking) and the Brussels-Capital Region. Prior to the sixth Belgian state reform, the province of Flemish Brabant was divided into two electoral districts: one for Leuven and the other, named Brussels-Halle-Vilvoorde (BHV), which encompassed both the 19 bilingual municipalities from the Brussels-Capital Region and the 35 Dutch-speaking municipalities of Halle-Vilvoorde in Flemish Brabant, including seven municipalities with linguistic facilities for French-speaking inhabitants.
Metropolitan areas in Belgium
National statistics differ between five Metropolitan areas in Belgium. These five metropolitan areas (Dutch: "Agglomeratie", French: "Agglomération") are also covered by Eurostat statistics as separate Larger Urban Zones (LUZ).
List of municipalities of the Flemish Region
The Flemish Region of Belgium is divided into 300 municipalities, listed in the table below. The numbers refer to the location of the municipalities on the maps of the respective provinces.
Municipalities of Belgium
Article 4 of the constitution states that each municipality must belong to only one of the four official language areas that were established in 1962–63. In the three officially unilingual language areas, a couple of dozen municipalities in the vicinity of another language area must provide limited facilities for speakers of that other language. As only a law carried by special majorities can change the language status of any municipality, these arrangements have prevented some small municipalities with facilities to be merged in the 1970s, and thus the most minute Belgian municipalities are still found in this group, notably Herstappe with only 84 inhabitants (in 2006).
Brussels-Halle-Vilvoorde
With the reform in 1993 making Belgium into a federal state, Brabant became part of all three regions: the Brussels, Flemish and Walloon Region.
List of motorways in Belgium
Prefixed by the letter B from the French word "bretelle".Former province of Brabant, corresponds to Flemish Brabant, Walloon Brabant and the Brussels-Capital Region nowadays.
Provinces of Belgium
Following the Fifth State Reform, the responsibility for the provincial institutions was devolved to the Regions. The Regions have the power to amend or replace the existing legislation on the provincial institutions, most notably the Provincial Law of 30 April 1836. In the Flemish Region, the Provincial Decree of 9 December 2005 applies. In the Walloon Region, the Code of Local Democracy and Decentralisation applies. The legal framework in these Regions is still very similar, but that could change in the future. Although the Regions are responsible for the provincial institutions, the Federal State has retained its responsibility over the provinces in certain cases. For instance, the Regions are responsible for the appointment of the Provincial Governors, but only after the unanimous advice of the Federal Council of Ministers. Legislation regarding the Governor and Vice-Governor of Brussels-Capital, and the Deputy Governor of Flemish Brabant, has also remained a federal competency.
Geography of Belgium
The main cities in Belgium in terms of population are Brussels, Antwerp, Ghent, Charleroi and Liège. Other notable cities include Bruges, Namur, Leuven, Mons and Mechelen.
Politics of Wallonia
Since 23 April 1993, Belgium has been a federal state, divided into three geographical regions and three linguistic communities. The Walloon Region is one of the three regions, almost totally French-speaking. The other two geographical regions are the Flemish Region, a mainly Dutch-speaking region in the north and west, and the Brussels-Capital, bilingual French-Dutch administering the city of Brussels. Some governmental competencies are exercised by the linguistic communities, of which the French community of Belgium is the largest in Wallonia, while the German-speaking community of Belgium's responsibilities are for an area within Wallonia.
Francization of Brussels
The 19 municipalities of Brussels are the only officially bilingual part of Belgium. The creation of a bilingual, full-fledged Brussels region, with its own competencies and jurisdiction, had long been hampered by different visions of Belgian federalism.
Initially, Flemish political parties demanded Flanders be given jurisdiction over cultural matters, concerned with the dominance of the French language in the federal government. Likewise, as Wallonia was in economic decline, Francophone political parties were concerned with getting economic autonomy for the French-speaking regions to address the situation. The Flemings also feared being in the minority, faced with two other French-speaking regions. They viewed the creation of a separate Brussels region as definitively cutting Brussels off from Flanders, an admission of the loss of Brussels to Francization. Essentially, the Flemings had a vision of Belgium with two parts: a Dutch-speaking part and a French-speaking part, whereas Francophones had a vision with three parts: Flanders, Brussels and Wallonia.
Brussels
Brussels ( ; ), officially the Brussels-Capital Region (; ), is a region of Belgium comprising 19 municipalities, including the City of Brussels, which is the capital of Belgium. The Brussels-Capital Region is located in the central portion of the country and is a part of both the French Community of Belgium and the Flemish Community, but is separate from the Flemish Region (in which it forms an enclave) and the Walloon Region. Brussels is the most densely populated and the richest region in Belgium in terms of GDP per capita. It covers , a relatively small area compared to the two other regions, and has a population of 1.2 million. The metropolitan area of Brussels counts over 2.1 million people, which makes it the largest in Belgium. It is also part of a large conurbation extending towards Ghent, Antwerp, Leuven and Walloon Brabant, home to over 5 million people.
Coal-mining region
Belgium
Administrative centre
The chef-lieu in Belgium is the administrative centre of each of the ten Provinces of Belgium. Three of these cities also give their name to their province (Antwerp, Liège and Namur).
List of municipalities of the Walloon Region
The Walloon Region of Belgium, commonly called "Wallonia", is divided into 262 municipalities, listed in the table below. The numbers refer to the location of the municipalities on the maps of the respective provinces.
Partition of Belgium
The territory of Belgium is the southern part of the historical region called Low Countries. The Low Countries emerged at the end of the Middle Ages as a very loose political confederation of fiefdoms ruled in personal union by the House of Habsburg: the Seventeen Provinces. The largest components of this union were the Duchy of Brabant, the County of Flanders, the County of Hainaut and the Duchy of Luxembourg. The Prince-Bishopric of Liège was almost an enclave within the Seventeen Provinces. The prince-bishopric was not formally included in the Habsburgs' dominion but was, since the time of Emperor Charles V, strongly influenced by its Habsburg neighbors. The border which emerged after the Dutch Revolt and the Eighty Years' War split the Seventeen Provinces into the Dutch Republic and the Spanish Netherlands. In particular Brabant and Flanders were divided into northern and southern components. Though the fiefdoms constituting the Southern Netherlands were more or less ruled by a single reigning House, they were all quite distinct. Different traditions and dialects of Dutch and Walloon appeared. Within the largest fiefdoms like Liège, Flanders and Luxembourg, several distinct languages and dialects were in use.
The feudal borders partitioning Belgium during the Ancien Régime have nothing in common with the partitioning lines which currently separate the Belgian federal entities. The French disbanded these feudal entities and replaced them with departments during the French occupation from 1794 to 1815. The new entities or departments mirrored, approximately, the language border. For instance the new division separated the bilingual kernel of the Prince-Bishopric of Liège into two more or less monolingual regions. The only major exceptions were the bilingual Dyle and Forêts departments. The departments would eventually become the provinces of the United Kingdom of the Netherlands and later on of Belgium. The name of the provinces were inspired by the roughly corresponding medieval fiefdoms. In particular, the Dyle department became the province of Brabant, that is the most southern part of the older duchy of Brabant.
Brussels
The Brussels-Capital Region is one of the three federated regions of Belgium, alongside the Walloon Region and the Flemish Region. Geographically and linguistically, it is a bilingual enclave in the monolingual Flemish Region. Regions are one component of Belgium's institutions, the three communities being the other component: Brussels' inhabitants deal with either the French Community or the Flemish Community for matters such as culture and education, as well as a Common Community for competencies which do not belong exclusively to either Community, such as healthcare and social welfare.
List of Belgian provinces by Human Development Index
This is a list of Belgian provinces and the Region of Brussels by Human Development Index as of 2018 with data for the year 2017.
Geography of Belgium
To get the total area of Belgium, the surface of the Brussels-Capital Region should be added to the list, since Brussels is not in any Belgian province anymore since the province of Brabant has been split. Belgium has also 3,462 square kilometers of sea territories in the North Sea. On 29 May 2000, 2,000 square meters were granted by the Netherlands to Belgium (a piece of land in Zelzate along the Ghent–Terneuzen Canal).
Communities, regions and language areas of Belgium
Since the splitting of Brabant in 1995, the Brussels Region does not belong to any of the provinces. Within the Region, most of the provincial competencies are assumed by the Brussels regional institutions and community commissions. Additionally, there is a governor of Brussels-Capital, analogously to provinces.
Municipalities of Belgium
Because of the specific nature of the reorganization in Antwerp, the law of December 30, 1975 didn't enter into force for Antwerp until January 1, 1983. The formerly independent municipalities were called districts and were given an advisory function. However, on January 1, 2001 they were given an administrative function again. The merger of Antwerp with the municipalities of Berchem, Borgerhout, Deurne, Hoboken, Ekeren, Merksem and Wilrijk in 1983 finally reduced the number of municipalities in Belgium to 589 and was the last reorganization of the municipalities for several decades because the merger of the 19 municipalities of Brussels was postponed indefinitely.
Arrondissements of Belgium
Until March 31, 2014 Belgium had 27 judicial arrondissements. These are now sections of today's 12 judicial arrondissements. In addition, the arrondissement Brussels was divided into the sections Brussels and Halle-Vilvoorde
Belgische Unie – Union Belge
Belgium is a federal country with an unusual structure. It consists of 3 groups differentiated by language: Dutch-speaking Belgians or Flemings (about 59% of the population who live in the north of the country), French-speaking Belgians or Walloons (about 40% of the population who live in the south), and German speaking Belgians (about 1% of the population who live in the east). At present, Belgium is a federation with two different divisions of authority: there is a Belgian Federal Government, the territory is divided into three Communities on a linguistic basis (Flemish, Walloon and German-speaking), and concurrent with this division also exists another one, the Regions (Flanders, Wallonia and the Brussels-Capital Region). So one is part of Belgium, one Community, and one Region. The Communities have the power over cultural facilities: education, culture, sport etc., while the Regions have power over environmental facilities: environment and city planning, tourism etc. The federal government has been reduced to mainly the departments of Justice, Finances, Foreign Affairs (though Foreign Trade is regional), and Internal Affairs (though regions also have ministers for this).
History of Belgium
The history of Belgium extends before the founding of the modern state of that name in 1830. Belgium's history is therefore intertwined with those of its neighbours: the Netherlands, Germany, France and Luxembourg. For most of its history, what is now Belgium was either a part of a larger territory, such as the Carolingian Empire, or divided into a number of smaller states, prominent among them being the Duchy of Brabant, the County of Flanders, the Prince-Bishopric of Liège and County of Luxembourg. Due to its strategic location and the many armies fighting on its soil, since the Thirty Years' War (1618–1648), Belgium has often been called the "battlefield of Europe" or the "cockpit of Europe". It is also remarkable as a European nation which contains, and is divided by, a language boundary between Latin-derived French and Germanic Dutch.
Communities, regions and language areas of Belgium
The four language areas (as in Dutch and in German), occasionally referred to as linguistic regions (from French ), are:
Belgian Provincial Leagues
The Belgian Provincial leagues are the lower leagues for Belgian football. Until 2016, these were at levels 5-8 in the Belgian football league system however as part of the reform an extra level was created causing the provincial leagues to drop to levels 6-9. The provincial leagues are divided into 9 regional league systems (one for each province, but Flemish Brabant and Walloon Brabant are merged and contain also the football teams from the Brussels Capital Region). Each league system is itself divided into 4 levels (except for Luxembourg where there are only 3). The number of leagues at each level depends on the province, but every province must have only one league at the top level. The best teams from the 9 first divisions can promote to the Belgian Third Amateur Division, the fifth and lowest level in the national leagues (either directly, or after playoff matches).
Football in Belgium
Each provincial subdivision of the FA runs its own 4-division league. Only teams that are geographically located in a certain province are allowed to compete in the corresponding provincial league. A notable exception is the Brabant provincial league, which is made up of teams from Flemish Brabant, Walloon Brabant and Brussels.
List of highest points in Belgium
A list of highest points in Belgium by province, regions and communities of Belgium.
History of Belgium
The successive linguistic disputes have made the successive Belgian governments very unstable. The three major parties (Liberal -right wing-, Catholic -center- and, Socialist -left wing-) all split in two according to their French- or Dutch-speaking electorate. A language border was determined by the first Gilson Act of November 8, 1962. The boundaries of certain provinces, arrondissements and municipalities were modified (among others, Mouscron became a part of Hainaut and Voeren became a part of Limburg) and facilities for linguistic minorities were introduced in 25 municipalities. On August 2, 1963, the second Gilson Act entered into force, fixing the division of Belgium into four language areas: a Dutch, a French and a German language area, with Brussels as a bilingual area.
Communities, regions and language areas of Belgium
Regions have authority in fields connected with their territory in the widest meaning of the term, thus relating to the economy, employment, agriculture, water policy, housing, public works, energy, transport, the environment, town and country planning, nature conservation, credit, and foreign trade. They supervise the provinces, municipalities and intercommunal utility companies.
United Belgian States
The United Belgian States was a confederal republic of eight provinces which had their own governments, were sovereign and independent, and were governed directly by the Sovereign Congress (; ), the confederal government. The Sovereign Congress was seated in Brussels and consisted of representatives of each of the eight provinces. The provinces of the republic were divided into 11 smaller separate territories, each with their own regional identities:In 1789, a church-inspired popular revolt broke out in reaction to the emperor's centralizing and anticlerical policies. Two factions appeared: the "Statists" who opposed the reforms, and the "Vonckists" named for Jan Frans Vonck who initially supported the reforms but then joined the opposition, due to the clumsy way in which the reforms were carried out.
Brussels-Halle-Vilvoorde
Later on, in 1980, the Cultural Communities became known as Communities. Also two regions were established: the Flemish Region and the Walloon Region. Although the creation of a Brussels Region was provided for in 1970, the Brussels-Capital Region was not established until a later reform.
The province of Brabant had been one of the nine provinces of Belgium. But due to the arrangement of the linguistic border, which passes through this province, the province was abolished after several reforms:
Outline of Belgium
Regions of Belgium
Wallonia
Belgium is a federal state made up of three communities and three regions, each with considerable autonomy. One of these is the Walloon Region, which is governed by the Parliament of Wallonia and the executive Walloon Government. The Walloon Region's autonomy extends even to foreign policy; Wallonia is entitled to pursue its own foreign policy, including the signing of treaties, and in many domains even the Belgian federal government is not able to sign an international treaty without the agreement of the Parliament of Wallonia.
Belgium
Phytogeographically, Belgium is shared between the Atlantic European and Central European provinces of the Circumboreal Region within the Boreal Kingdom. According to the World Wide Fund for Nature, the territory of Belgium belongs to the ecoregion of Atlantic mixed forests. Because of its high population density, industrialization and its location in the centre of Western Europe, Belgium still faces some environmental problems. However, due to consistent efforts by the various levels of government in Belgium, the state of the environment in Belgium is gradually improving. This led to Belgium being ranked as one of the top 10 countries (9 out of 132) in terms of environmental protection trends, and to Belgium being ranked in 2012 as the 24th country out of 132 for environmental protection. Belgium moreover has one of Europe's highest waste recycling rates. In particular, the Flemish region of Belgium has the highest waste diversion rate in Europe. Almost 75 percent of the residential waste produced there is reused, recycled, or composted.
State reform in Belgium
Two Regions were established as well in 1980: the Flemish Region and the Walloon Region. However, in Flanders it was decided in 1980 to immediately merge the institutions of the Community and the Region. Although the creation of a Brussels Region was provided for in 1970, the Brussels-Capital Region was not established until the third state reform.
Communities, regions and language areas of Belgium
The Flemish Region or Flanders ( or ) occupies the northern part of Belgium. It has a surface area of , or 44.29% of Belgium, and is divided into 5 provinces which contain a total of 300 municipalities.
Wallonia
To the north of the Sambre and Meuse valley lies the Central Belgian plateau, which is characterized by intensive agriculture. The Walloon part of this plateau is traditionally divided into several regions: Walloon Brabant around Nivelles, Western Hainaut (, around Tournai), and Hesbaye around Waremme. South of the sillon industriel, the land is more rugged and is characterized by more extensive farming. It is traditionally divided into the regions of Entre-Sambre-et-Meuse, Condroz, Fagne-Famenne, the Ardennes and Land of Herve, as well as the Belgian Lorraine around Arlon and Virton. Dividing it into Condroz, Famenne, Calestienne, Ardennes (including Thiérache), and Belgian Lorraine (which includes the Gaume) is more reflective of the physical geography. The larger region, the Ardennes, is a thickly forested plateau with caves and small gorges. It is host to much of Belgium's wildlife but little agricultural capacity. This area extends westward into France and eastward to the Eifel in Germany via the High Fens plateau, on which the Signal de Botrange forms the highest point in Belgium at 694 metres (2,277 ft).
Administratively, Wallonia consists of the provinces of Walloon Brabant, Hainaut, Liège, Luxembourg, and Namur.
It is also divided into 20 administrative arrondissements and 262 municipalities.
Belgium
Based on the four language areas defined in 1962–63 (the Dutch, bilingual, French and German language areas), consecutive revisions of the country's constitution in 1970, 1980, 1988 and 1993 established a unique form of a federal state with segregated political power into three levels:
Municipalities of Belgium
The fifth state reform (2001) transferred the responsibility over municipalities from the federal level to the three regions.
Constitution of Belgium
In 1831 Belgium was a unitary state organised at three levels: the national level, provinces and municipalities. State reform in Belgium added a devolved level to the existing structure. Since 1993, the first article of the Constitution stipulates that Belgium is a federal state composed of Communities and Regions. This means that there are two types of devolved entities at the same level, with neither taking precedence over the other.
Arrondissements of Belgium
Arrondissements of Belgium are subdivisions below the provinces of Belgium. There are administrative, judicial and electoral arrondissements. These may or may not relate to identical geographical areas.
Brussels
Since the splitting of Brabant in 1995, the Brussels Region does not belong to any of the provinces of Belgium, nor is it subdivided into provinces itself. Within the Region, 99% of the areas of provincial jurisdiction are assumed by the Brussels regional institutions and community commissions. Remaining is only the governor of Brussels-Capital and some aides, analogously to provinces. Its status is roughly akin to that of a federal district.
Communities, regions and language areas of Belgium
Each of the entities either have their own parliament and government (for the federal state, the communities and the regions) or their own council and executive college (for provinces and municipalities). The entities in "italics" do not have their own institutions — arrondissements because they are purely administrative; language areas because they merely define the linguistic regime of a municipality; and the Flemish Region because its powers are exercised by the Flemish Community.
Brussels
Brussels and its suburbs, taking into account its outer commuter zone (RER/GEN area), have a population of about 2.6 million and extend over a large part of the two Brabant provinces. Brussels is also part of a wider diamond-shaped conurbation, with Ghent, Antwerp and Leuven, which has about 4.4 million inhabitants (a little more than 40% of the total population of Belgium).
Communities, regions and language areas of Belgium
The three regions are:
Municipalities of Belgium
Belgium comprises 581 municipalities (; ; ) grouped into five provinces in each of two regions and into a third region, the Brussels-Capital Region, comprising 19 municipalities that do not belong to a province. In most cases, the municipalities are the smallest administrative subdivisions of Belgium, but in municipalities with more than 100,000 inhabitants, on the initiative of the local council, sub-municipal administrative entities with elected councils may be created. As such, only Antwerp, having over 500,000 inhabitants, became subdivided into nine districts (). The Belgian arrondissements (also in French as well as in Dutch), an administrative level between province (or the capital region) and municipality, or the lowest judicial level, are in English sometimes called districts as well.
State reform in Belgium
The fourth state reform, which took place in 1993 under Prime Minister Jean-Luc Dehaene, consolidated the previous state reforms and turned Belgium into a full-fledged federal state. The first article of the Belgian Constitution was amended to read as follows, “Belgium is a Federal State which consists of Communities and Regions”. During the fourth state reform, the responsibilities of the Communities and the Regions were expanded again, their resources were increased and they were given more fiscal responsibilities. Other major changes included the direct election of the parliaments of the Communities and the Regions, the splitting up of the Province of Brabant into Flemish Brabant and Walloon Brabant, and the reformation of the Federal Parliament's bicameral system and the relations between the Federal Parliament and the Federal Government. The first direct elections for the parliaments of the Communities and the Regions took place on 21 May 1995.
Elections in Belgium
There are eleven constituencies coinciding with the ten provinces and the Brussels-Capital Region. Previous to 2012, Brussels formed together with half of the province of Flemish Brabant the Brussels-Halle-Vilvoorde constituency.