Belgium is a stable electoral democracy with a long record of peaceful transfers of power. Political rights and civil liberties are legally guaranteed and largely respected. Major concerns in recent years have included the threat of terrorism, corruption scandals, and rising xenophobia.

• Elections took place at the national, regional and European levels. Although there were no landslide victories, the seat allocations reflected a rise among parties right of center. The polls were held in accordance with democratic standards, and stakeholders accepted the results. Negotiations for the formation of a new national government were ongoing at year’s end.
• In December, Guy D’haeseleer of the Vlaams Belang party was sworn in as mayor of the town of Ninove, marking the first time in the postwar period that the far right had secured a Belgian mayorship.
• Drug trafficking and associated violence remained a problem, particularly in Brussels and Antwerp, where a number of related shootings took place.
• In September, the minister of media in the Wallonia-Brussels Federation, Jacqueline Galant, made several posts on social media criticizing the French-language broadcaster RTBF as biased. The European Federation of Journalists (EFJ) called on political leaders to refrain from interfering in editorial content, and reaffirmed the supervisory role of the Belgian media’s independent regulatory and self-regulatory bodies.

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For additional background information, see last year’s full report.