One month before the next elections, there is an uproar within the municipalities and the federal public service Interior to ensure that everything is ready to welcome the thousands of voters in one of the 11,026 polling stations installed in Belgium. The vote is intended to be more inclusive with particular attention paid to the accessibility of polling stations to people with disabilities.
Fewer than 200 municipalities allow electronic voting
Great news a few elections ago, electronic voting was completely abandoned in Wallonia… So, in Belgium, 187 municipalities (159 Flemish municipalities, the 19 Brussels municipalities and the nine German-speaking municipalities) vote electronically while all Walloon municipalities and 141 municipalities in the north of the country vote by paper ballot.
More than 8.6 million voters
Besides the 8.36 million Belgians who will vote, 76,464 citizens of the European Union who live with us will also go to the polls. To which must still be added 253,078 Belgians living abroad who will vote for the House of Representatives and 101,530 Belgians living abroad who will vote for the Belgian lists in the European Parliament. These are figures taken from the National Register as of the observation date of April 23, 2024.
Young or first-time voters: a coveted treasure of 800,000 votes!
Many young people will go to the voting booth for the first time: 830,865 in totalof which 244,957 aged just 16 and 17 who, for the first time in Belgium, have the right to vote in the European elections.
2024 elections in Belgium: can you refuse to be an assessor?
26 Maltese will vote in the Europeans
It is the federal government website which gives us the figure: in the European elections, some 26 Maltese living in Belgium will vote on June 9. It is the smallest community in our country that will go to the polls. At the other end, we will find the French who will be ready, 20,000 of them, to do their democratic duty.
Zero euros for your travel costs
This is the amount that you will pay in certain cases accepted by the administration. In other words, the travel costs of voters who stay or work in a municipality other than the one where they have to go to vote can, in certain cases, be reimbursed. In other cases, or if you have purchased a train ticket, you can declare your expenses online. You will be reimbursed for the equivalent of the train ticket between the two municipalities, whatever your means of transport.
A fine of up to 200 euros
Prosecutions and penalties incurred in the event of absence from the election are indeed provided for in articles 209 and 210 of the Electoral Code. A first unjustified absence is punishable by a reprimand or a fine of 5 to 10 euros (to be multiplied by 8), i.e. 40 to 80 euros. In the event of a repeat offense, the fine will be 10 to 25 euros (80 to 200 euros).
Within eight days of the proclamation of the elected officials, the King’s Prosecutor draws up the list of voters who did not take part in the vote and whose excuses were not accepted. Ultimately, it is the public prosecutor who determines which offenses will be prosecuted.
2024 elections in Belgium: what is an invalid vote?
Another fine which could hurt even more: up to 1,600 euros!
You take the mail from your mailbox and it is there… Your summons as assessor for the 2024 elections. And if the designated assessor does not show up on the day of the election and he or she did not warn or did so too late: the fine may be 400 to 1600 eurosand be accompanied by legal proceedings.
But can you refuse to be an assessor, once you have been appointed? Even if it is a legal obligation, a Belgian voter can, in the eyes of the law, refuse to fulfill his role as assessor for elections in a polling station. He needs to justify it quickly though.
10 years without being able to vote, that’s what’s hanging over your head…
The law is very clear… If an unjustified abstention occurs at least four times within fifteen yearsthe voter is removed from the electoral rolls for 10 years and during this period, he cannot receive any appointment, promotion or distinction from a public authority. Please note that absence from the election is only punishable if it is an unjustified absence. The justice of the peace is, however, free to assess what should be considered a justified absence and what is not.
55,651 euros maximum for a candidate campaigning in Antwerp
This is the constituency that receives the highest electoral spending permission per “head of list” candidate to campaign for the House of Representatives, that of Antwerp with 55,651 euros. It is more than the Brussels-Capital Region which capitalizes 30,511 euros per candidate. The poor relation of these maximum amounts is the constituency of Luxembourg with a maximum envelope of 16,135 euros.
The other candidates on the list are required to respect a certain ceiling (5,000 euros in the Chamber for example), as are the substitutes (2,500 euros). Which de facto implies a certain imbalance between party leaders and other candidates.
How can these differences be explained? For the heads of the list, the ceiling varies according to the size of the constituency (the number of inhabitants) and the results previously obtained by the list. The legislator imposes two ceilings: one for the parties, set at 1 million euros per party, and a ceiling for the candidates which varies according to the type of election and the place they occupy on the lists.
Which party are you closest to?
78 million financial windfall for political parties in Belgium
The political parties in Belgium are not to be complained about and are, according to L’Echo, among the best financed in Europe with these famous 78 million euros in annual grants ! For comparison, the Netherlands grants… 17 million to 14 parties. There is currently a whole debate about reducing this allocation or better distributing it to a minimum.
The richest in Belgian politics? The Flemish nationalists are sleeping on 24 million euros…
Still according to the economic daily, and via the latest figures available on the subject dating from 2021, it is the N-VA which has the finest “war treasure” with 23.7 million euross! They form with their best enemy, the PS, the leading duo since the French-speaking socialists have them 15.3 million. What to keep them in power?
Wallonia will not accept more than 50% of electoral expenses
The announcement was made two years ago but will apply to these first elections since the Walloon government’s decision. What is this decision? In view of the next municipal and provincial elections in October 2024, the Walloon government has decided to limit parties’ expenses for their advertising on social networks to 50% of eligible expenses. A decision which could affect on this side of the linguistic border a party like the PTB which we know is very active and persuasive on social networks…
In this regard, at the beginning of 2024, a figure was released that was, to say the least, telling: 6 million euros. This is the amount that Belgian political parties spent on Facebook (and Instagram) in 2023. An increase of 20% compared to 2022 according to figures from the Adlens collective. The N-VA (1.6 million), Vlaams Belang (1.6 million) and the PTB (650,000) alone spend 4 million euros, or 65% of the total…
The daring poster of a Voor U candidate on the outskirts of Brussels does not go unnoticed: “a transparent Europe”
541 days, 653 days… Record broken again after the federal elections of June 9, 2024?
This is not a great Source of pride for our country… And this was massively and quite negatively or ironically publicized elsewhere in the world. A Belgium totally incapable of forming a government which broke its own record in 2020 when the outgoing coalition was formed…
The first sad record should be placed in the interval between the second government of Yves Leterme and that of Elio Di Rupo: 541 days of impasse between 2010 and 2011. The second record will ultimately be 653 days only thanks to… Covid-19. As a reminder, the government of Charles Michel fell in December 2018 and the federal elections were held in May 2019. The government of Alexander De Croo was only formed in October 2020… Do the math!
The big question, given the latest political polls, is whether this record can be beaten the day after the federal elections on June 9 as voting intentions seem completely different on both sides of the country.
3.5 million have already done it… And you, what are you waiting for to do it?
Thanks to our electoral test which compares the party programs, via a whole series of concrete questions from everyday life, see your voting intentions more clearly. And this at all levels of power: federal, regional, Europe. Don’t know who to vote for in the next elections? Are you wondering which party, in the political offering in Belgium, will best defend your ideas, or, on the contrary, distance itself the most from them? You’re right in the right place.
