BELGIAN FEDERAL PARLIAMENT

The 'Belgian Federal Parliament' is a bicameral parliament. It consists of the Chamber of Representatives (, , ) and the Senate (, , ).

Contents

Chamber of Representatives

Senate

United Chambers

See also

External links

Chamber of Representatives

Main articles: Belgian Chamber of Representatives

The Chamber of Representatives holds its plenary meetings in the Palace of the Nation, Brussels. Eligibility requirements for the Chamber are a minimum age of 21, citizenship, and residency in Belgium.
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 as some 35 Dutch-speaking municipalities in Flemish Brabant, incl. 6 with language facilities for French-speakers.
The current composition was elected at the federal elections of 2007.

Senate

Main articles: Belgian Senate



The 'Senate' consists of 71 member. There are four categories of senators: directly elected sentators, community senators, co-opted senators and senators by right (, ). For the election of the 25 Flemish and 15 Francophone directly-elected senators, the country is divided into three constituencies. Of the Community senators, 10 are elected by the Flemish Parliament, 10 by the Parliament of the French Community, and 1 by the Parliament of the German-speaking Community.
The third category, the co-opted senators, consists of 10 representatives elected by the first two groups of Senators. Eligibility requirements for the Senate are identical to those for the Chamber.
The final category, that of senators by right, consists of the children of the reigning monarch who are eligible to succeed to the throne. In theory, they can vote; but since the royal family is supposed to be politically neutral, they, in practice, do not vote in the Senate and are not considered when the quorum is counted.
In the past, until 1991, senators by right could only be men, since women couldn't be heir to the throne before that day. At this time, however, this is no longer true; and at this time, Princess Astrid, Prince Philippe, and Prince Laurent exercise their constitutional right for a seat in the Senate. An unwritten law states that senators of law should not participate in Senate votes, even though they officially have the right to do so.
The Princes and Princesses of the royal line are full members of the Senate: Prince Philippe, Princess Astrid and Prince Laurent sit in the Senate.
The President of the Senate is Armand De Decker (MR).
The Senate holds its plenary meetings in the Palace of the Nation, Brussels.

United Chambers

The United Chambers is the name given to the body created when both chambers of the Federal Parliament meet in joint session. The United Chambers are convened only on certain occasions enumerated in the Belgian Constitution: the King must take the constitutional oath before the United Chambers, in accordance with article 91 of the Constitution, and the United Chambers must provide for the regency in the event that the successor to the Crown is a minor or the King is unable to reign, in accordance with articles 92 and 93 of the Constitution.

See also

★ Politics of Belgium

★ List of political parties in Belgium

★ Brussels Parliament

★ Flemish Parliament

★ ''Commission communautaire française''

★ Parliament of the German-speaking Community

★ ''Vlaamse Gemeenschapscommissie''

★ Walloon Parliament

External links

★ Chamber of Representatives

★ Senate