The
Belgian Federal Parliament is a
bicameral parliament. It consists of the
Chamber of Representatives (
Dutch: , , ) and the
Senate (
Dutch: , , ). It sits in the
Palace of the Nation (; ).
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 and some 35 Dutch-speaking municipalities in
Flemish Brabant, incl. 7 with
language facilities for
French-speakers.
The current composition was elected at the
federal elections of 2010.
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Senate
The
Senate consists of 71 members. There are four categories of senators:...
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