Belgian Federal Parliament

The Belgian Federal Parliament is a bicameral parliament. It has the Chamber of Representatives and the Senate. It sits in the Palace of the Nation.

Belgian Federal Parliament Dutch: Federaal Parlement van België French: Parlement fédéral belge
Type
Type	Bicameral
Houses	Senate Chamber of Representatives
Leadership
President of the Senate	Christine Defraigne, MR since October 14, 2014
President of the Chamber	Siegfried Bracke, N-VA since October 14, 2014
Seats	210 60 senators 150 representatives
Elections
Last election	May 25, 2014
Last election	May 25, 2014
Meeting place
Palace of the Nation, Brussels
Website
www.fed-parl.be

Chamber of Representatives

The number of seats in the Chamber is 150. They are elected from 11 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).

To be elected a person must be at least 21 years old, have Belgium citizenship, and live in Belgium.

Senate

Till the general elections of 2014, the Senate had 71 members. There were four categories of senators: directly elected senators, community senators, co-opted senators and senators by right. Co-opted senators were 10 representatives elected by the first two groups of senators. Senators by right were the children of the current monarch.

Since 2014, the Senate has 60 members. There are only two categories of senators: community senators (50) and co-opted senators (10).

Eligibility requirements for the Senate are the same as for the Chamber.