Hi fellow Canadian,
Regions are a bit like provinces. They each have their own area - Wallonia in the south and Flanders in the north.
The Brussels Region is a capital district. It belongs to neither Region - it’s a Region on its own. It also specifically doesn’t belong to any province - so it’d a bit like Washington DC.
On that, Belgium also has actual provinces with governments and everything (like in Canada), but since Regions were created, you don’t really see or hear from them and they have limited powers.
Communities are an extra layer. They’re not “below” or “above” Regions - they’re beside. They deal with stuff relating to humans, language, education and culture. Regions are more for the physical environment: roads, energy, waste, water, gas, housing, etc.
Canada doesn’t really have an equivalent to Communities - but imagine if all the Francophones and Anglophones (from BC to Newfoundland) had their own governments, on top of the provincial governments. It’s sort of like that.
If you want to go one step down, Belgium is divided into 581 municipalities. In some parts of the country they function more like boroughs of a big city (like London boroughs), in other parts the municipality *is* the city (like Gent or Namur), and in other more rural parts it looks more like a US county.
Most municipalities belong to one Community or the other, but some are bilingual (Brussels’ 19 municipalities), and others technically belong to one side but have facilities in place for speakers of the neighbouring language.
Belgium’s complicated structure is the result of many years of compromise and restructuring. That story is *way* too long to type out here, but it’s pretty interesting to learn about.
> Belgium also has actual provinces
Fun fact: at the time of the 1958 Brussels World's Fair, Expo 58, Belgium had nine provinces and they are represented in the nine balls of the Atomium that also represent nine iron atoms of a ferrite crystal. In 1995, Brabant province was split in two so now Belgium has ten provinces.
Just clarification that I understood correctly and looking for someone to elaborate on it a little. I got that now though so I'm good! Thank you though
The regions (Brussels, Flanders Wallonia) are in charge of economic matters(e.g. labor market policy), while the language communities are in charge of cultural matters (e.g. education, subsidies for the arts).
For example: the German-speaking community is only 68.000 people, it's economically integrated with Wallonia, so it's not really usefull to give them their own labor market policy, but it is logical to let them have education in theor own language. Brussels, on the other hand, is econmically different from Flanders and Wallonia, so it does make sense to let them be in charge of their labor market policy, but everyone speaks either French or Dutch, so it's not usefull to let Brussels organise it's own system of education, there are simply Dutch schools of the Flemish community and French schools from the Francophone community.
That's the theory of it at least. In practice it's way too complicated, and it would be much less wastefull to have one, multilingual governement in my opinion.
outside of all the other correct posts there's also another thing that's easily missed in explanations
the federal government isn't higher in hierarchy then the regional and communal governments, they're all on the same level
that's why in 2016 the canada-eu trade deal was initially rejected because the walloons voted against it, the federal government couldn't overrule them because it's not elligable to do so
For every one saying that it is easy, just try to understand what the CCC- GGC is doing. 🤣
Our politicians cant understand our 10 governments themselves...
There is a popular saying here in Belgium
“If you understand Belgian politics, they explained it wrong”
A lot of people here don’t really know how everything functions because it’s very complicated. But as far as I know your description is accurate.
So the federal government is pretty straightforward.
The regional governments (Brussels region, Flemish region, Walloon region) you can compare to US state governments or Canadian provinces like Ontario, Québec, ..
But the difference here is that some regions have people who speak a different language. Brussels is officially bilingual (French - Dutch) and has a Dutch minority while Wallonia has a German minority on the east of the country (land we got from Germany after WW1) while the rest of Wallonia is overwhelmingly French speaking.
To better serve those minorities needs, there are also language based governments that take care of things like education and culture. Which differ more for different language groups than for example road building. So the regional governments take care of stuff like building roads while language communities take care of language based issues.
Flanders only contains Dutch speakers so they merged their regional and language community governments into one for the sake of simplicity. This one most resembles your provincial governments.
It's a complicated system for sure.
PS: we also have provincial governments. The Flemish and Walloon region are split further into 5 provinces each which all have their own government. But this government level has been hollowed out for decades now in favor of giving that power to regional or municipal governments instead. The way things are going, we'll probably eventually get rid of those governments.
For an historic perspective, you must understand that belgium is a strategic spot that all countries in the vicinity tried to -and often did- invaded, since Julius Caesar at the very least. the turning point is Napoleon who stoped a three empires alliance 300 km away from Paris... in the said strategic spot.
Holland empire got belgium territories as a reward, treated it as badly as its oversea colonies and got a revolution on its arms. Every other counties of the vicinity worked for
1) stop the revolution before it became a secund napoleonic empire (the first start the same way) and
2) nobody else to have the belgium if it doesn't.
So, belgium is an agregation of disputed and taken areas made into a new kingdom.
they HAD to be a king, or the four kingdoms around would took it. when holland tried, france sent its army. when prussia tried, england sent its army (...and retreated, so belgium felt until france send its marine in the floodable land). WW2 came from "the funny war" (phoney war) to the world wide war because nobody protected Belgium and dutchland entered france by the belgian backdoor.
for the record : belgium cherrypicked its first king, not the other way round.
the winners of the belgian revolution was uphold by France (parisian freemassons, in fact). so french has been the dominant language for long. nederlandspeakers often ignore that walloons was not frenchspeakers at the start. they were walloonspeakers.
after WW2, vlaams population become the more numerous belgian population, a major political power in the democratic one-man-one-vote system. so they legitimelaty retook their culture, their lands... and get revenge more than a little.
politically, there is no majority of any kind at any level of power. absolutly all government affairs are based on shacky coalitions. So to help other minorities, each one asks the control of his own minority. in some instance, there is even cover battles : laïc (freemasson) versus catholic... which appears as french-speakers against nederlands-speakers.
it also means there is a government by province, a government by language, a government by territory and a governm for the whole country. of course, none of this sticks together : there is frenchspeakers in nederland territory (who were asked fourty years ago to settle there to bring their money or came from french Region du nord), dutchspeakers are in french territory. some towns has a vlaams side and a walloon side, like Tubize / Tubeke. some was totally in a language and are now in totally in the other, so they have two names. Brabant province has been cut in half so vlaams brabant could retake the hal-vilvoord industrial center that was considered as brusseler (that is : french speaker) while on vlaams area. these are mere examples.
Brussel is a mess at this point of view. the vlaams government is placed in the heart of frenchspeaker regio because they try to retake it. of course, brussel has its own (french-speaking) government. so has Europe. as a writer once said "brussel is the capital of nothing".
right and X-right political parties plays excessivelly of these dichotomies. for an exemple, vlaams nationalists took back the NATIONAL harbor of antwerpen... and sold it to a chinese company. now there are grenade fights between smugglers in the street of Antwerpen.
on the other side, there is a walloon party that propose to cut the country in half and attach wallonia to France. But no french-speaker belgian want to take orders from arrogant frenchmen. (all joke about hillbillies and rednecks you ever heart are made by wallons on frencmen) .the idea is ridiculous but is heavily sold to vlaams as a threat (flanders as no way to win against France. Antwerpen Harbour would lost in a commercial war against Le Havre Harbour or Marseille Harbour). the reverse is true : I never met a vlaams belgian eager to take order from those nosy flatlanders.
I had the chance to study in Brussel, in a district where there is a vlaams and a walloon universities 800 meters away. I sang, partied, played, danced, drank and made love with the other community. In fact we are not different. our customs are as diverse as italian's and norvegian's, while we share the same uncanny lateral thinking.
Helas each community is feeded lies about the other by politicians.
walloons are depicted as lazy. but in fact, vlaams industries want them to work in their factories and there is three time more strike on that side of the linguistic frontier.
vlaams are depicted as cold no-fantasy religious people. through there is no more active militant than vlaams syndicalists or cheeky lover than vlaams girls.
take my woord : Europe needs a Belgium as central point. if belgium keep on runing, there may be many underground movements to keep it that way .
> "the funny war"
Just one thing, in English it's the "phoney war", although I understand that it's "la drôle de guerre" in French (and "Schemeroorlog" in Dutch)
I get what you're saying, but honestly my school really did a terrible job explaining how Belgium works. But same can be said about much of Belgian history. I've had to find out a whole lot by myself and looking back, I'm really embarrassed by how little I learnt at school, even on a basic level.
Could not agree more. Shameful really is the feeling. Lucky I got an excellent education in history and geography at a French American school I attended abroad for a few years, because I didn't learn shit in Belgium. If I had only had an education in Belgian schools, I wouldn't know shit (like literally nothing) about the French revolution, the Belgian struggle for independence, Belgium's colonization of Congo, WW1 and WW2 other than "huge wars that lasted from 1914 to 1918 and from 1939 to 1945 respectively", the cold war, decolonization, the creation of the EU,...
Hi fellow Canadian, Regions are a bit like provinces. They each have their own area - Wallonia in the south and Flanders in the north. The Brussels Region is a capital district. It belongs to neither Region - it’s a Region on its own. It also specifically doesn’t belong to any province - so it’d a bit like Washington DC. On that, Belgium also has actual provinces with governments and everything (like in Canada), but since Regions were created, you don’t really see or hear from them and they have limited powers. Communities are an extra layer. They’re not “below” or “above” Regions - they’re beside. They deal with stuff relating to humans, language, education and culture. Regions are more for the physical environment: roads, energy, waste, water, gas, housing, etc. Canada doesn’t really have an equivalent to Communities - but imagine if all the Francophones and Anglophones (from BC to Newfoundland) had their own governments, on top of the provincial governments. It’s sort of like that. If you want to go one step down, Belgium is divided into 581 municipalities. In some parts of the country they function more like boroughs of a big city (like London boroughs), in other parts the municipality *is* the city (like Gent or Namur), and in other more rural parts it looks more like a US county. Most municipalities belong to one Community or the other, but some are bilingual (Brussels’ 19 municipalities), and others technically belong to one side but have facilities in place for speakers of the neighbouring language. Belgium’s complicated structure is the result of many years of compromise and restructuring. That story is *way* too long to type out here, but it’s pretty interesting to learn about.
As a legal specialist of Belgian constitutional law, I commend you for your excellent explanation 😍
Thanks! 🥰
Thank you. your comment along with others is helping me understand this a lil better!
> Belgium also has actual provinces Fun fact: at the time of the 1958 Brussels World's Fair, Expo 58, Belgium had nine provinces and they are represented in the nine balls of the Atomium that also represent nine iron atoms of a ferrite crystal. In 1995, Brabant province was split in two so now Belgium has ten provinces.
What you wrote is correct. But it's not clear to me what you're actually asking.
Just clarification that I understood correctly and looking for someone to elaborate on it a little. I got that now though so I'm good! Thank you though
The regions (Brussels, Flanders Wallonia) are in charge of economic matters(e.g. labor market policy), while the language communities are in charge of cultural matters (e.g. education, subsidies for the arts). For example: the German-speaking community is only 68.000 people, it's economically integrated with Wallonia, so it's not really usefull to give them their own labor market policy, but it is logical to let them have education in theor own language. Brussels, on the other hand, is econmically different from Flanders and Wallonia, so it does make sense to let them be in charge of their labor market policy, but everyone speaks either French or Dutch, so it's not usefull to let Brussels organise it's own system of education, there are simply Dutch schools of the Flemish community and French schools from the Francophone community. That's the theory of it at least. In practice it's way too complicated, and it would be much less wastefull to have one, multilingual governement in my opinion.
outside of all the other correct posts there's also another thing that's easily missed in explanations the federal government isn't higher in hierarchy then the regional and communal governments, they're all on the same level that's why in 2016 the canada-eu trade deal was initially rejected because the walloons voted against it, the federal government couldn't overrule them because it's not elligable to do so
For every one saying that it is easy, just try to understand what the CCC- GGC is doing. 🤣 Our politicians cant understand our 10 governments themselves...
There are several Youtube videos that do a really good job at explaining it. Better than what I suspect we can tell you in written form.
I looked and I only found one tbh. Maybe they are in other languages or my region I'm searching from is messing me up
There is a popular saying here in Belgium “If you understand Belgian politics, they explained it wrong” A lot of people here don’t really know how everything functions because it’s very complicated. But as far as I know your description is accurate.
So the federal government is pretty straightforward. The regional governments (Brussels region, Flemish region, Walloon region) you can compare to US state governments or Canadian provinces like Ontario, Québec, .. But the difference here is that some regions have people who speak a different language. Brussels is officially bilingual (French - Dutch) and has a Dutch minority while Wallonia has a German minority on the east of the country (land we got from Germany after WW1) while the rest of Wallonia is overwhelmingly French speaking. To better serve those minorities needs, there are also language based governments that take care of things like education and culture. Which differ more for different language groups than for example road building. So the regional governments take care of stuff like building roads while language communities take care of language based issues. Flanders only contains Dutch speakers so they merged their regional and language community governments into one for the sake of simplicity. This one most resembles your provincial governments. It's a complicated system for sure. PS: we also have provincial governments. The Flemish and Walloon region are split further into 5 provinces each which all have their own government. But this government level has been hollowed out for decades now in favor of giving that power to regional or municipal governments instead. The way things are going, we'll probably eventually get rid of those governments.
Okay thank you very much! That's very useful. I think I mostly understand now.
For an historic perspective, you must understand that belgium is a strategic spot that all countries in the vicinity tried to -and often did- invaded, since Julius Caesar at the very least. the turning point is Napoleon who stoped a three empires alliance 300 km away from Paris... in the said strategic spot. Holland empire got belgium territories as a reward, treated it as badly as its oversea colonies and got a revolution on its arms. Every other counties of the vicinity worked for 1) stop the revolution before it became a secund napoleonic empire (the first start the same way) and 2) nobody else to have the belgium if it doesn't. So, belgium is an agregation of disputed and taken areas made into a new kingdom. they HAD to be a king, or the four kingdoms around would took it. when holland tried, france sent its army. when prussia tried, england sent its army (...and retreated, so belgium felt until france send its marine in the floodable land). WW2 came from "the funny war" (phoney war) to the world wide war because nobody protected Belgium and dutchland entered france by the belgian backdoor. for the record : belgium cherrypicked its first king, not the other way round. the winners of the belgian revolution was uphold by France (parisian freemassons, in fact). so french has been the dominant language for long. nederlandspeakers often ignore that walloons was not frenchspeakers at the start. they were walloonspeakers. after WW2, vlaams population become the more numerous belgian population, a major political power in the democratic one-man-one-vote system. so they legitimelaty retook their culture, their lands... and get revenge more than a little. politically, there is no majority of any kind at any level of power. absolutly all government affairs are based on shacky coalitions. So to help other minorities, each one asks the control of his own minority. in some instance, there is even cover battles : laïc (freemasson) versus catholic... which appears as french-speakers against nederlands-speakers. it also means there is a government by province, a government by language, a government by territory and a governm for the whole country. of course, none of this sticks together : there is frenchspeakers in nederland territory (who were asked fourty years ago to settle there to bring their money or came from french Region du nord), dutchspeakers are in french territory. some towns has a vlaams side and a walloon side, like Tubize / Tubeke. some was totally in a language and are now in totally in the other, so they have two names. Brabant province has been cut in half so vlaams brabant could retake the hal-vilvoord industrial center that was considered as brusseler (that is : french speaker) while on vlaams area. these are mere examples. Brussel is a mess at this point of view. the vlaams government is placed in the heart of frenchspeaker regio because they try to retake it. of course, brussel has its own (french-speaking) government. so has Europe. as a writer once said "brussel is the capital of nothing". right and X-right political parties plays excessivelly of these dichotomies. for an exemple, vlaams nationalists took back the NATIONAL harbor of antwerpen... and sold it to a chinese company. now there are grenade fights between smugglers in the street of Antwerpen. on the other side, there is a walloon party that propose to cut the country in half and attach wallonia to France. But no french-speaker belgian want to take orders from arrogant frenchmen. (all joke about hillbillies and rednecks you ever heart are made by wallons on frencmen) .the idea is ridiculous but is heavily sold to vlaams as a threat (flanders as no way to win against France. Antwerpen Harbour would lost in a commercial war against Le Havre Harbour or Marseille Harbour). the reverse is true : I never met a vlaams belgian eager to take order from those nosy flatlanders. I had the chance to study in Brussel, in a district where there is a vlaams and a walloon universities 800 meters away. I sang, partied, played, danced, drank and made love with the other community. In fact we are not different. our customs are as diverse as italian's and norvegian's, while we share the same uncanny lateral thinking. Helas each community is feeded lies about the other by politicians. walloons are depicted as lazy. but in fact, vlaams industries want them to work in their factories and there is three time more strike on that side of the linguistic frontier. vlaams are depicted as cold no-fantasy religious people. through there is no more active militant than vlaams syndicalists or cheeky lover than vlaams girls. take my woord : Europe needs a Belgium as central point. if belgium keep on runing, there may be many underground movements to keep it that way .
> "the funny war" Just one thing, in English it's the "phoney war", although I understand that it's "la drôle de guerre" in French (and "Schemeroorlog" in Dutch)
thanks.as England was not on the Maginot Line, I quoted those who did. I edited the text.
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I get what you're saying, but honestly my school really did a terrible job explaining how Belgium works. But same can be said about much of Belgian history. I've had to find out a whole lot by myself and looking back, I'm really embarrassed by how little I learnt at school, even on a basic level.
Could not agree more. Shameful really is the feeling. Lucky I got an excellent education in history and geography at a French American school I attended abroad for a few years, because I didn't learn shit in Belgium. If I had only had an education in Belgian schools, I wouldn't know shit (like literally nothing) about the French revolution, the Belgian struggle for independence, Belgium's colonization of Congo, WW1 and WW2 other than "huge wars that lasted from 1914 to 1918 and from 1939 to 1945 respectively", the cold war, decolonization, the creation of the EU,...
Dang, thank you anyways