Will Flanders follow the federal move to curb the power of the list vote?

Flemish MPs Tom Ongena and Egbert Lachaert have put a choice about electoral power before the Flemish Parliament: should candidates with the most preference votes take a party’s seats, rather than allowing votes cast for the list as a whole to benefit those placed highest by the party? Their proposal for a special decree, filed on 4 February 2026, would neutralise the list vote when seats and substitute positions are distributed within a list. The Flemish Parliament’s official file says the text is still awaiting committee consideration, so no change has yet been approved.

The proposal follows the federal government’s decision to pursue the same principle for elections to the federal Chamber of Representatives and the European Parliament. The De Wever coalition agreement says that only preference votes should count when determining which candidates are elected within a successful list. A federal bill to amend the Electoral Code and the European-election legislation was filed on 3 July 2025, according to the explanatory memorandum accompanying the Flemish text.

This is not, strictly speaking, the abolition of the list vote. A voter could still select the party list, and that vote would continue to help determine how many seats the party wins. What would disappear is its “devolutive effect”: the mechanism through which part of the list-vote total is transferred to candidates in the order chosen by the party. At present, half of the relevant pool is allocated from the top down until candidates reach the electoral threshold required for a seat. A well-placed candidate can consequently be elected ahead of a lower-ranked colleague who collected more personal votes.

Ongena and Lachaert, both members of the Flemish liberal opposition, argue in their parliamentary memorandum that removing that mechanism would give voters greater control over the people who represent them and reduce the influence of party organisations. Under their model, once a list’s total number of seats has been calculated, those seats would go to its candidates in descending order of preference votes. The original list order would decide only a tie. Substitute candidates would also be ranked by their personal totals.

The institutional distinction matters. Federal legislation governs the Chamber and, through separate legislation, Belgian elections to the European Parliament. Flanders has constitutive autonomy over this aspect of its own parliamentary election and must therefore pass its own special decree. Article 118 of the Constitution and the special institutional legislation require a two-thirds majority of votes cast, with a majority of Flemish MPs present. The federal coalition cannot impose the change on the Flemish Parliament.

The liberals say voters would otherwise face different rules on the same election day in 2029, when federal, regional and European contests are normally held together. That argument has a recognisable Flemish precedent. Flanders already removed the devolutive effect of the list vote for municipal, district and provincial elections through its 2021 local-democracy reform. The revised rules were first used at the local elections of 13 October 2024. VRT NWS reported at the time that list position no longer supplied candidates with transferred votes in those contests.

Yet the reform divides people who otherwise support political renewal. Prime Minister Bart De Wever defended the federal measure during a parliamentary discussion of his institutional policy, describing it as part of the coalition compromise. The federal government’s frame is individual voter choice: parties would still win seats collectively, but voters using preference votes would decide who occupies them.

Ecolo-Groen federal MP Stefaan Van Hecke presented the clearest counterargument in that same parliamentary debate. He said the existing list vote allows parties to promote younger or less-established candidates and warned that full neutralisation would favour politicians who already enjoy media exposure or personal name recognition. He also noted that roughly half of voters in 2024 chose a list vote, which can reasonably be read as acceptance of the party’s ordering rather than an absence of preference.

That concern is reinforced by the behaviour of voters. Research reported by VRT NWS after the 2024 elections found that preference voting had declined for a fifth consecutive election. About half of voters used a list vote in the Chamber, Flemish and European contests. The researchers linked the trend partly to campaigns built around a small number of national figureheads who were candidates in only one constituency, leaving voters elsewhere more inclined to endorse the party as a whole.

The practical impact may nevertheless be smaller than the symbolism suggests. Van Hecke told the federal committee that preference votes had already enabled candidates to jump the party order 19 times at federal level and 21 times in the 2024 Flemish election. In the local context, UHasselt political scientist Sofie Hennau calculated that removing transferred list votes would have changed only 34 of 7,398 council seats under the previous results, VRT NWS reported. Federal and regional effects need not be identical, because list voting is more common in those contests, but the figures caution against assuming a wholesale turnover of personnel.

The broader contest is therefore between two legitimate ideas of representation. One treats the ballot as a mandate to individual candidates and sees party-controlled list order as an expression of Belgium’s strong particracy. The other treats a party list as a collective political offer whose composition may balance experience, renewal, geography and gender. Neutralisation shifts power toward recognisable candidates, but it does not remove party influence: parties would still select candidates, decide who receives prominent campaign support and control access to the list itself.

Attention now turns to the Flemish Parliament’s committee process and, ultimately, the search for a two-thirds majority. The governing N-VA, Vooruit and CD&V parties have not established that majority through the filing of this opposition proposal alone. Amendments, hearings or an expert assessment could still alter the text. Until Parliament votes, Flemish elections remain under the existing system—even if the federal and European rules are changed before voters return to the polls in 2029.