Brussels-Halle-Vilvoorde (BHV) was a constituency and judicial district, consisting of cantons of the Brussels Capital Region and the Province of Flemish Brabant (Halle-Vilvoorde) in the Flemish Region.
BHV was therefore the only constituency in Belgium overlapping different regions and language areas. As a result, residents of BHV could vote for both Dutch-speaking and French-speaking parties in the Federal and European elections, not only in the bilingual districts, but also in the monolingual Dutch electoral cantons. This means French-speaking candidates from Brussels could run for the Federal Parliament on party lists in the monolingual Dutch-speaking area.
The heterogeneous composition of the district has made BHV a point of contention between the linguistic communities for a long time. The demarcation of the language border, the division into language areas and the subsequent state reforms aimed to provide a solution to the linguistic differences between the communities through a gradual development towards homogeneous language areas (as dictated by the principle of territorialism: the regional language is used as the official and educational language), in addition to the language laws and agreements regarding the representation of minorities in monolingual regions and in the bilingual Brussels Capital Region.
Constituency District Brussel-Halle-Vilvoorde, Studiedienst van de Vlaamse Regering
From the Flemish point of view, division of the constituency was the final step in the process of federalisation. Since the ‘60s, Flemish politicians have repeatedly introduced bills with the intention to split up the constituency. The initiators were convinced that a comprehensive solution for this matter would ease the tensions between the linguistic communities. There was a consensus in the Flemish political community regarding the necessity to split up the constituency. A similar unanimity could, however, be found among the French-speaking parties, which blocked the Flemish division proposals because they did not want to lose the Halle-Vilvoorde votes and wanted to maintain the connection with the municipalities with language facilities. Furthermore, the French-speaking politicians considered Brussels-Halle-Vilvoorde one of the final buffers against Flemish independence. From their point of view, extending the bilingual statute to the 6 Flemish municipalities around Brussels, and possibly even further, was the final solution to settle the conflict between the linguistic communities. As a result, BHV has become a symbolic dispute in which Flemish and French-speaking politicians are diametrically opposed.
Constituency Contrary to the Principle of Equality
Brussels-Halle-Vilvoorde was the only district where the provincial constituency did not apply to the federal elections, as since 2002 the country’s other electoral districts coincide with the provincial borders. At the time, no agreement could be reached regarding the redistricting of the BHV and Leuven constituencies. The compromise was a complicated system which linked together the distribution of votes and seats of the BHV, Leuven and Nijvel constituencies. In 2003 the Constitutional Court (formerly the Court of Arbitration) judged that the current division of Belgium into constituencies was untenable because of the asymmetry between the provincial constituencies and those in Flemish Brabant and Brussels. This 'untenable inequality' had to be resolved prior to the new federal elections in 2011. The Flemish parties saw this judgement as a confirmation of the necessity to split up the constituency, while the French-speaking community prefers even the preservation of the former division into districts over the division of BHV.
Division Proposal in the Chamber
The Brussels-Halle-Vilvoorde matter was one of the major stakes of the federal elections on 10 June 2007. The government negotiators appeared unable to reach a compromise on the division of the constituency, whether part of a larger state reform or not, partly due to earlier election promises in this regard. Because of the lack of compromise, a number of Flemish Representatives introduced a new division proposal. This was followed by a historical vote in the Chamber Committee on the Interior of 7 November 2007, during which the Flemish Committee Members, save 1 abstention, voted in favour of a proposal to split up the constituency. The historic value of the vote lies in the fact that the Dutch-speaking parties had never before taken advantage of their majority position. The French-speaking Community then invoked a conflict of interests procedure, allowing the final vote in the plenary meeting to be postponed. Since no solution could be reached in the Consultation Committee comprised of the different communities and regions in the 6 months following, the proposal again ended up in Parliament. During the discussion in the plenary meeting of May 2008, the French-speaking parties introduced amendments, which needed to be presented to the Council of State, and the Brussels Commission of the French-speaking Community (COCOF) then also invoked a conflict of interests. Therefore, discussion of the bills was again postponed by several months for a mandatory period of deliberation. In January 2009, the Walloon Parliament in turn invoked a conflict of interest and on 26 October 2009, the German-speaking Community employed the same delay mechanism. The King appointed Jean-Luc Dehaene to prepare a solution for Brussels-Halle-Vilvoorde by Easter 2010. Failure to reach a compromise led to the fall of the government on 26 April 2010. To avoid that the proposal for a split would still be adopted by a parliamentary majority, French-language parties initiated the alarm bell procedure. This suspended the parliamentary procedure and it was therefore again up to the new parliament to strike a compromise on B-H-V.
Background Information
The political and administrative subdivision of the district has developed against a historical and linguistic background. Political and ideological motives clearly underlay the demarcation of the constituencies. The antithesis between the city and the country played a central role in the subdivision of the electorate, in the sense that the urban voters were as a rule ascribed more liberal ideas, free-thought and progressiveness, whereas the country was associated with the conservative catholic vote. In other words, the combination of rural municipalities with the urbanised suburbs of Brussels in mixed electoral cantons added a political advantage to the technical voting aspect, resulting in a lessened impact of the more radical urban movements. In the 20th century, the role these mixed administrative demarcations played in the gallicization process became more prominent. This effect was intensified by the suburbanisation of the municipalities neighbouring the conurbation. An important part of the constituency, i.e. the Brussels Conurbation, had a bilingual statute and the larger part of its population spoke French. The border territory acted as a meeting place between mono- and bilingual people. These interactions led to increased pressure on the Dutch language with its lesser standing by the more highly esteemed French language, mainly because of the alleged increase in status associated with adopting the language. The proximity of the language border likewise had a strong gallicizing effect on this constituency.
The language group to which the representatives elected in this constituency belonged, was determined by the language chosen when taking the oath. Consequently, the number of Dutch-speaking and French-speaking Members of Parliament fluctuated for each election and the overall ratio of languages represented in Parliament was largely determined on this constituency’s territory.
This ambivalent situation allowed continued claims on the Flemish municipalities surrounding Brussels by the French-speaking Brussels community. French-speaking immigrants thus retained the right to vote on French-speaking candidates running for Chamber and Senate, not only in the 6 municipalities with language facilities, but also in the larger hinterland. Though residing in the Dutch-speaking area, French-speaking inhabitants could send their own French-speaking representatives from the Flemish municipalities surrounding Brussels or from the Brussels Conurbation to both Chambers to defend their own interests pertaining to their language. In the eyes of the French-speaking community in and around Brussels, this left the door open for a possible expansion of the conurbation and the language facility system. Even though this option was not explicitly defined by law as a facility for French-speaking inhabitants nor limited to the six so-called 'facility municipalities', it was nevertheless considered a concession to the French-speaking inhabitants of the surrounding municipalities. In this manner, the constituency’s Flemish communities remained a transitional area of sorts between the bilingual Brussels Conurbation and the uniformly Dutch-speaking language area, instead of the language uniformity being extended to all fields.
However, the earlier composition of the constituency also offered advantages to the Flemish parties in Brussels. Because of the Dutch-speaking voters in the constituency’s Flemish municipalities, Dutch-speaking politicians from Brussels were able to be elected on their own party lists. Should the Brussels-Halle-Vilvoorde constituency be split up, this advantage would disappear. That is why the division proposals for BHV retained the distribution of seats or the linking of lists in their earlier form. After the approval of these proposals, the Brussels lists would be able to distribute seats among lists from the Province of Flemish Brabant or Walloon Brabant, but at no time consecutively. Untill recently party lists of candidates standing for the undivided BHV constituency could distribute seats among lists from either the Leuven or Walloon Brabant constituency. Without this distribution, the Flemish lists in Brussels would not stand a chance, unless through guaranteed representation.
The sixth state reform
After the long form of government after the 2010 federal elections, the majority parties agreed to split the Brussels-Halle-Vilvoorde electoral district. In July 2012, after the Senate, the House also approved the split proposal with 106 votes in favor and 42 against. The former BHV electoral district, consisting of the 19 municipalities of the Brussels-Capital Region and 35 Flemish municipalities of Halle-Vilvoorde, was divided into two constituencies: the electoral district of Brussels-Capital (19 municipalities) and the electoral district of Flemish Brabant (a merger of the former constituency of Leuven and the municipalities of Halle-Vilvoorde). In this last electoral district, votes on candidates that arise in Brussels are no longer possible, except for the residents of the six municipalities with facilities. In the municipalities of Drogenbos, Kraainem, Linkebeek, Sint-Genesius-Rode, Wemmel and Wezembeek-Oppem, the inhabitants can choose whether they cast their vote on Brussels lists or for parties arriving in the Flemish-Brabant constituency. On 25 May 2014, a new federal hemisphere will be voted and European elections will also take place. These are the first elections since the split and with the new electoral terms. It is looking forward to the effects of the new classifications in particular for the Dutch-speaking representation in Brussels and for the choice of the inhabitants of the six peripheral municipalities.
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