An election was held on 26 May 2019 in the three Belgian constituencies (the

Dutch-speaking electoral college Dutch ( ) is a West Germanic language of the Indo-European language family, spoken by about 25 million people as a first language and 5 million as a second language and is the third most spoken Germanic language. In Europe, Dutch is the nat ...

, the

French-speaking electoral college The French-speaking electoral college is one of three constituencies of the European Parliament in Belgium. It currently elects 8 MEPs using the D'Hondt method of party-list proportional representation. It elected 9 MEPs until the 2007 accession ...

and the

German-speaking electoral college The German-speaking electoral college is one of three constituencies of the European Parliament in Belgium. It elects just one MEP for East Belgium, making it the only such constituency, effectively making it first past the post between partie ...

) to elect the Belgian delegation to the European Parliament. It was part of the

2019 European Parliament election The 2019 European Parliament election was held in the European Union (EU) between 23 and 26 May 2019. It was the ninth parliamentary election since the first direct elections in 1979. A total of 751 Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) we ...

. A royal order of 15 June 2018 fixed the date of the European Parliament election in Belgium, following an agreement at European level. Per the Belgian Constitution, the Belgian regional elections, and additionally the Belgian federal election because no snap election occurred, were automatically held on the same day.

Marianne Thyssen Marianne Leonie Petrus Thyssen (; born 24 July 1956) is a Belgian politician of the Christian Democratic and Flemish Party (CD&V) who served as European Commissioner for Employment, Social Affairs, Skills and Labour Mobility between 2014 and 201 ...

, who was re-elected Member of the European Parliament in 2014 as ''

lijsttrekker In politics, a lead candidate (; , ) is the candidate placed first on a party list. In parliamentary systems, it is often the party's nominee for the position of head of government, and the party chair or party leader. Usage by country Net ...

'' for CD&V and who subsequently became European Commissioner, announced in July 2018 that she would quit politics in 2019.

Electoral system

As the reapportionment after Brexit did not impact the number of seats allocated to Belgium, 21 MEPs were elected in Belgium, as in the 2014 election. One of them is by law allocated to the German-speaking electoral college and the remaining ones are allocated to the Dutch-speaking and to the French-speaking electoral college in accordance with a population formula, giving them respectively twelve and eight seats, as in 2014.30 JULI 2018. - Koninklijk besluit tot vaststelling van het aantal zetels dat toegekend wordt aan het Nederlandse kiescollege en het Franse kiescollege voor de verkiezing van het Europees Parlement
/ref> Voters could only vote on the lists depending on the language area they live in. This means that in the bilingual

arrondissement of Brussels-Capital The Arrondissement of Brussels-Capital (; ) is the only administrative arrondissement in the Brussels-Capital Region of Belgium. Because it is the only administrative arrondissement in the Brussels Region, its territory coincides with that of the ...

, voters could choose whether to vote for the Dutch-speaking or for the French-speaking electoral college. There was an exception to this rule for the six

municipalities with language facilities In Belgium, there are 27 municipalities with language facilities (; ; ), which must offer linguistic services to residents in Dutch, French, or German in addition to their single official languages. All other municipalities – with the except ...

in the

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 ...

, whose inhabitants could also opt to vote for French-speaking lists despite being in the Dutch language area. Seats were allocated according to the

D'Hondt method The D'Hondt method, also called the Jefferson method or the greatest divisors method, is an apportionment method for allocating seats in parliaments among federal states, or in proportional representation among political parties. It belongs to ...

in each of the three electoral colleges; however, the German-speaking electoral college de facto used a

first-past-the-post system First-past-the-post (FPTP)—also called choose-one, first-preference plurality (FPP), or simply plurality—is a single-winner voting rule. Voters mark one candidate as their favorite, or first-preference, and the candidate with more first- ...

, since it elected only one MEP. The

electoral threshold The electoral threshold, or election threshold, is the minimum share of votes that a candidate or political party requires before they become entitled to representation or additional seats in a legislature. This limit can operate in various ...

was 5%, which was based on the vote share per electoral college rather than nationally. All Belgian citizens aged 18 or over and residing in Belgium were obligated to participate in the election. Other EU citizens residing in Belgium as well as Belgians living in another EU member state had the right to vote on Belgian lists in European Parliament elections. The law of 17 November 2016 extended this right to Belgians living in a non-EU member state, which was already possible for federal elections.

Results

Elected members

Groups

''From 2019 European Parliament election#Groups''

Outgoing delegation

External links

Elections 2019
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Federal Public Service Interior The FPS Interior (, , ), formerly the Ministry of the Interior, is a Federal Public Service of Belgium. It was created by Royal Order on 14 January 2002, as part of the plans of the Verhofstadt I Government to modernise the federal administratio ...

References

{{Belgian elections

Belgium Belgium, officially the Kingdom of Belgium, is a country in Northwestern Europe. Situated in a coastal lowland region known as the Low Countries, it is bordered by the Netherlands to the north, Germany to the east, Luxembourg to the southeas ...

European Parliament elections in Belgium 2019 elections in Belgium