The winners of Belgium’s June election strengthened their position in local elections on Sunday.
Belgians are going to the polls to vote for mayors, local councilors and local councils just four months after a referendum that overhauled the makeup of national and regional powers.
After elections in June, new governments were formed in the French-speaking region of Wallonia in southern Belgium and the Dutch-speaking region of Flanders in the north. But talks over a new national government with regional governments in Brussels have stalled over complaints that the parties are reluctant to compromise while they campaign for local elections to strengthen their power.
As the results of the first round of local elections came out, the winners of the June election seemed to have solidified their position.
The Flemish nationalist N-VA has once again been confirmed as “the largest party in Flanders by far,” said Bart De Wever, the party’s leader, mayor of Antwerp and likely to become Belgium’s next prime minister. In Antwerp, De Wever’s list was comfortably ahead of its main challenger, the far-left PVDA.
De Wever is in difficult and lengthy talks with the centrist wing of the Dutch-speaking CD&V and the liberal wing of the French-speaking reformist movement Les Engagés to lay the foundations for a national government for the N-VA party. MR), Dutch-speaking Socialist Party Vooruit. With the local elections canceled, negotiations can now resume at full speed.
In Wallonia, MR and Les Engagés recorded strong results after winning elections in June to form a ruling coalition in the French-speaking region.
Initial results show that Les Engagés president Maxime Prévot has successfully defended his position as mayor of Namur. The first results also suggested that MR President Georges-Louis Bouchez failed to depose the socialist mayor of Mons.
But the party’s Brussels leader, David Leisterh, scored a major victory in his own community, Watermael-Boitsfort, over a joint list with Les Engagés. The party achieved major victories in other parts of the metropolitan area, although not overall.
Leisterh, who is in a prime position to become the next minister of the Brussels regional government, told POLITICO ahead of the election that he hoped Sunday’s results would “back up the results in June and confirm that there is a demand for change.”
After French-speaking Ecolo’s poor performance in June, the Greens also took a hit at the local level in Brussels, but held back losses in some communities. Dutch-speaking chief Green Party negotiator Elke Van den Brandt had hoped for a strong local result in Brussels amid difficult regional coalition talks marred by clashes with MR.
Meanwhile, the Flemish anti-migration and Flemish nationalist Vlaams Belang party also claimed victory.
In Ninove, a small city west of Brussels, the far-right party won an absolute majority, making Vlaams Belang its first mayor, led by local leader Guy D’Haeseleer. Democratic Leader Tom Van Grieken said Sunday that progress had been made in “almost every community,” making him “one of the winners of this election.”
This election saw low participation rates. Particularly in Flanders, where local elections were held without compulsory voting, voter turnout fell to around 60% in many communes.
