The 2014 federal and European elections in Belgium R  egis Dandoy * , Min Reuchamps, Pierre Baudewyns Universit e catholique de Louvain, Place Montesquieu, 1/L 2.08.07, 1348 Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium article info Article history: Received 1 April 2015 Received in revised form 18 May 2015 Accepted 19 May 2015 Available online 27 May 2015 On 25 May 2014, some eight millions voters were called to the booths in Belgium for federal elections but also Eu- ropean and regional elections. No less than 463 parlia- mentarians were to be directly elected in these triple simultaneous elections, the second time in Belgian political history. But these tri-level elections were especially watched because of the 541-day period of federal govern- ment formation that the country experienced after the previous 2010 federal elections (Abts et al., 2012). The key question was therefore to what extent Belgium would go through a new period of high political instability and ten- sions between parties from the two main linguistic com- munities of the country. In this regard, the score of the Flemish Regionalists of the Nieuw-Vlaamse Alliantie (N-VA) was under very close scrutiny. For this reason, this report focuses on the federal and European elections in Belgium and leaves regional elections aside (for more information on these elections, see Baudewyns et al., 2015). The first section sets the background of the 2014 elections before turning to the electoral campaign on both sides of the lin- guistic border. The results of the federal and European elections are then presented and discussed in light of their implications for government formation and political dy- namics in Belgium in the coming years. 1. Background On 6 December 2011, Elio Di Rupo from the Parti Socialiste (PS) took oath as Prime Minister of a government consisting, besides the PS, of the Flemish and Francophone Christian-Democrats (Christen-Democratisch en Vlaams e CD&V, and Centre D emocrate Humaniste e cdH), the Liberals (Open Vlaamse Liberalen en Democraten e Open Vld, and Mouvement R eformateur e MR) and the Flemish Socialists (Socialistische Partij Anders e sp.a). This was the result of over one and a half years of negotiations that first led to the agreement on a large-scale sixth state reform, with the support of the two green parties (Ecolo and Groen) but without the support of the Flemish Regionalists of the N-VA and of the Francophone Regionalists of the FDF (F ed eralistes D emocrates Francophones). This new reform of the Belgian state brings about further devolution for the Regions and the Communities as well as increased fiscal autonomy (Reuchamps, 2013). It brought also important changes to the electoral system directly impacting the organization of the 2014 elections (Deschouwer and Reuchamps, 2013). First of all, the electoral district of Brussels-Halle/Hal- Vilvoorde/Vilvorde (BHV) that had been sources of contention since the 1960s was split in two: on the one hand, the 19 Brussels municipalities formed a bilingual district and, on the other hand, the remaining municipal- ities were merged with the municipalities of the Leuven district, forming a single district for the whole Flemish Brabant province. Francophones living in six municipalities e the so-called ‘municipalities with facilities’ e located in the Flemish Brabant, but bordering the Brussels Region, were granted the right to vote either for candidates in the Flemish Brabant or for candidates in Brussels. Second, the Senate was quite radically transformed from a directly elected assembly to an assembly indirectly composed of representatives from the Regions and Communities, sig- nalling its new function as a chamber for the sub-national entities. Third, a re-synchronization of the federal and regional elections came along the sixth state reform. It was decided that the federal legislatures would from now on last in principle for five years with elections to be organized the same day as the regional elections, which match the European electoral calendar. Beside these changes, the typical features of Belgian elections remain (Bouhon and Reuchamps, 2012): propor- tional electoral system with compulsory voting, via a semi- open party-list proportional representation. In each dis- trict, the parties need to reach a five per cent threshold to be eligible for the seats distribution that is performed under D'Hondt formula (Reuchamps et al., 2014). Given the split of the BHV district, each federal district follows now the boundaries of the provinces. For the European elec- tions, there are three districts broadly based on language: Dutch-, French- and German-speaking districts. For the 2014 elections and in application of the Treaty of Lisbon, * Corresponding author. E-mail address: regis.dandoy@uclouvain.be (R. Dandoy). Notes on recent elections / Electoral Studies 39 (2015) 153e177 164