Belgium’s Socialist Party Approves New Statutes in Reform Drive
More than 500 members of Belgium’s Socialist Party (PS) gathered in Jambes, Namur, on Sunday to approve a sweeping overhaul of the party’s statutes, marking the first concrete achievement of a “refoundation” process launched in the wake of the party’s historic electoral defeat in June 2024. The new rules place renewed emphasis on ethics, gender parity, zero tolerance for sexist and sexual violence, and greater citizen participation in shaping party policy, according to La Libre Belgique.
Context: A Party in Recovery
The vote represents a significant milestone for the PS, which lost its position as the largest francophone party in Belgium in the June 2024 federal and regional elections, falling behind the liberal Mouvement Réformateur (MR). The defeat triggered an existential crisis within the party, leading PS President Paul Magnette to announce the refoundation process in December 2024.
Since then, the party has conducted an extensive bottom-up consultation exercise. Between March and September 2025, the PS organized over 140 “Ateliers sans tabou” (workshops without taboos) across Wallonia and Brussels, involving more than 4,000 participants who generated 16,000 proposals. An online questionnaire was also opened to members and non-members alike, with results showing strong attachment to the word “socialism” as a core identity marker.
Key Reforms in the New Statutes
The new statutes, developed from a “blank page” approach involving elected officials, party members, and external experts, introduce several significant changes. More than 250 amendments and observations from members were examined before the final text was adopted on Sunday, as reported by RTBF.
Among the most notable reforms are enhanced ethics and governance rules, including a reinforced registry of mandates and income with automatic sanctions for non-compliance. Gender parity is now mandated at all levels of the party structure. A zero-tolerance policy on sexist and sexual violence establishes a dedicated listening cell, a national referent, and specific sanctions.
Citizen participation is a central pillar of the new statutes. Non-party citizens and associations will be continuously involved in developing political priorities, with one out of two participants in annual national panels drawn from outside the PS membership. Each newly elected official will be paired with an experienced mentor, and mandatory training on ethics, governance, and mandate execution has been introduced for all elected officials. The party also launched “EMILE” — the “École du Militantisme et de l’Engagement” — a school for activism and engagement to train members and engage with the broader public.
Magnette: “Those Who Come to Serve Themselves Will Go Elsewhere”
In his closing speech at the congress, Paul Magnette stressed the party’s duty of exemplary conduct. “We must be socialists in all of our behaviors,” Magnette said. “At the PS, those who come to serve themselves will go elsewhere. There are other parties for that.”
Magnette also emphasized the party’s commitment to secularism and critical thinking. “The strategy of the right is to say that the world is too complicated but that they take care of everything and that there is no alternative to capitalism and austerity. We want to feed critical thinking” for a better and more just world, he added.
Analysis: Substance or Process?
The statutory overhaul comes at a time when the PS enjoys relatively strong polling numbers — nearly 30% voting intentions in Wallonia — meaning the reforms are being implemented from a position of relative strength rather than crisis management. However, as noted by La Libre Belgique’s Adrien de Marneffe, the positive polling context has helped silence internal criticism of the refoundation process.
The PS has been repeatedly shaken by corruption scandals throughout its history, including the Agusta-Dassault affair of the 1990s and the Carolorégienne affair of the mid-2000s. The new ethics measures will face intense scrutiny over whether they are applied consistently and effectively.
What’s Next
The PS will continue its refoundation in the coming months with the development of its political project and the rewriting of the first two articles of the statutes, which define the party’s objectives and means of action. With the next federal and regional elections scheduled for 2029, the party has time to rebuild. However, the political landscape in Belgium remains volatile, with the current federal government under Prime Minister Bart De Wever pursuing austerity measures that the PS strongly opposes.
The PS’s refoundation mirrors similar efforts by other European social democratic parties attempting to reinvent themselves after electoral setbacks, placing an emphasis on grassroots engagement, ethical governance, and a return to core values as the foundation for political renewal.