Elections 2024: Who’s the biggest ‘people’s party’, the old one or the new one?

For many decades, Christian democrats CD&V have been the indisputable number one of political parties in Flanders, far ahead of their competitors. This has changed over the last 30 years. At the 9 June elections, N-VA was the biggest party, at both national and regional level. The question now is whether N-VA can also become the biggest at local level.

Just like the Christian democrats call themselves the European People’s Party at EU level, CD&V describes itself as a people’s party. Neither left nor right, CD&V wants to represent people from all parts of society. This concept has always been most successful at the local level: villages and small towns are where CD&V is the strongest.

Flemish nationalist N-VA is a very young party, but it also has ambitions to be a broad party for different groups. For years it has been the biggest party at national level, but it wasn’t able to break the local power of CD&V. Today, CD&V has 121 mayors, N-VA 62, from a total of 300 in Flanders.

This could change: N-VA is feeling positive after the last elections, whereas CD&V has been shrinking for years and isn’t able to turn that structural trend around.

Aside from electoral trends, agriculture is a major factor. In recent years, CD&V and N-VA have both been members of the Flemish government coalition. But they fought several battles, many of them about agriculture. With continuing debates over the priority given to climate and agriculture, the future of farming in densely populated Flanders is far from straightforward.

Flemish farmers have always been loyal members and sympathisers of CD&V, and the party in turn has looked after their interests. The Environment minister in the Flemish government in recent years, N-VA’s Zuhal Demir, on the contrary, is seen by farmers as the enemy because of the plans she has developed. How this animosity will turn out is difficult to predict.

Local elections will take place at municipal and provincial levels in Belgium on Sunday 13 October. In the run-up to the vote, Belga English explores the main issues to watch out for and provides a daily overview of events.

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