The magistrature in the area will be split along geographical lines: in Brussels, a bilingual system for the 19 municipalities of the capital; a Dutch-speaking system in Halle- Vilvoorde, including the facility municipalities. Those are the six communes in the Flemish periphery of Brussels whose French-speaking residents enjoy certain language rights. For them, the Halle-Vilvoorde system will include five bilingual magistrates on detachment from Brussels.

Within Brussels, the division between French- and Dutch-speaking magistrates and courts will be 80/20, with one-third of magistrates bilingual instead of the current ratio of two-thirds. The same ratio of bilingual magistrates will apply in Halle-Vilvoorde. There, the French-speaking secondees will be used when two French-speaking parties oppose each other.

The Dutch-speaking bar welcomed the agreement as bringing the magistrature closer to the people it serves. The presence of bilingual magistrates “keeps the contact between the communities alive,” the Dutch-speaking Order of Advocates said. “Those contacts must not be allowed to disappear.”

Flemish minister-president Kris Peeters told the Flemish Parliament that he would refrain from comment until all of the texts of the negotiators’ agreements were released. In the meantime, he saw no element which seemed to go against previous agreements. The N-VA, however, warned that any breach of the existing language laws would be “a major problem” for the party, which forms part of the Flemish coalition.

Parliament from four years to five

In another dossier, the negotiators agreed to extend the life of the federal parliament from four years to five years. Some parties clashed over the question of simultaneous elections. In 2014, federal and regional elections will fall together by chance, but since regional legislatures are already elected for five years, that could mean in the future that elections always coincide.

That’s not good news to those representatives in Flanders, who fear that their election campaign will be overshadowed by federal elections if the two happen at the same time. Wouter Beke, president of CD&V, which heads the Flemish coalition, said: “Each level of government has to be judged by the voter on its own performance: Has it done well or has it not done well? That applies to municipalities, provinces, Flanders and Europe,” he told VRT at the weekend.

The negotiators also agreed to put an end to the practice whereby a leading politician is presented to the electorate for their vote-winning capacities, only to decline to take up the seat after the election. In future, any politician who leads a party list must be prepared to take their seat. Finally, new federal ministers will appear before the parliament to lay out their vision of policy before starting the job, and all ministers will receive a cut in pay of 5%.

As Flanders Today went to press, chief negotiator Elio Di Rupo was due to visit the king to report on progress on the state reform aspects of his talks, before picking up negotiations again on the socialeconomic positions of the new federal government.