Why Belgium Can’t Simplify Its Francophone Institutions

Belgium’s francophone parties have long dreamed of doing what Flanders did: merging the French Community with the Walloon and Brussels institutions into a single francophone federation. The idea keeps failing, and a new analysis published by La Libre Belgique explains why the obstacles are as much political and administrative as constitutional.

The debate was revived in late June by Georges-Louis Bouchez, president of the liberal MR party, who called for a “grande fédération francophone” that would bring more competences back to the Fédération Wallonie-Bruxelles (FWB). In an interview with BrusselsToday, he argued that foreign trade, international image and even economic development should be handled at the level of the institution that links Wallonia and Brussels, rather than by the two regional governments. “The Walloon political class must understand that its engine of economic development is Brussels,” he said, pointing out that half of Brussels’ GDP is generated by commuters.

Why the debate keeps returning

The institutional puzzle is rooted in Belgium’s federal architecture. The country has three Regions — Flanders, Wallonia and Brussels-Capital — and three Communities, including the FWB, which oversees education, culture and youth for French speakers in Wallonia and Brussels. But the FWB has no fiscal autonomy: about 90% of its budget goes to education, and it depends on federal transfers. Flanders merged its Community and Region institutions years ago. Francophones, by contrast, remain split among the Walloon Region, the Brussels-Capital Region, the FWB and the Brussels French Community Commission (Cocof), producing overlapping governments and parliaments that critics say are costly and confusing.

That contrast is a constant source of friction in francophone politics, and it explains why every generation rediscovers the idea of institutional simplification. The frustration became visible in early June, when angry teachers demonstrated near the FWB parliament in Brussels over the programme law, an image that captured public discontent with the institutions.

Since the major state reform of 1988, the regional level has progressively gained ground on the francophone side at the expense of the French Community. That trajectory was symbolised in 2011, when the Communauté française unofficially renamed itself the Fédération Wallonie-Bruxelles to emphasise its regional anchoring. Bouchez’s proposal is, in effect, an attempt to reverse a thirty-year trend.

Bouchez places himself in the tradition of MR predecessors Jean Gol, Louis Michel and Didier Reynders, all of whom at various points championed the idea of uniting francophones under one roof. His central argument is that Wallonia and Brussels share no common border, so their strongest bond is language and culture.

He has also opened a channel with his coalition partner. According to BrusselsToday, “discreet discussions” are under way within the Azur majority (MR–Les Engagés), with Bouchez regularly talking to his Les Engagés counterpart, Yvan Verougstraete. But any formal merger would require a two-thirds constitutional majority, meaning opposition parties would have to be convinced before a single vote.

Parties remain divided

The reactions from other francophone parties have been chilly. L’Avenir reported that DéFI president Sophie Rohonyi questioned the MR’s coherence, given how strongly the party had pushed previous state reforms toward ever more regionalisation. The PS responded with irony, telling Bouchez to start “sweeping his own doorstep” by reducing the number of ministers where he governs — then, it said, francophones could talk seriously about institutions. Écolo and the PTB defended different models, either clearer competences and refederalisation or a stronger federal state, rather than a francophone super-structure.

Even within the MR’s own ranks, the idea is not new. Pierre-Yves Jeholet, the MR minister-president of the FWB, called in September 2023 for the francophone institutional space to be “reformed and simplified,” as BX1 reported at the time. He suggested transferring FWB health and early-childhood competences to the Regions, giving sport entirely to the FWB and cutting parliamentary seats by 20 percent.

The debate has also produced a sharper critique from the left. In May, Thomas Dermine, the PS mayor of Charleroi, told RTBF that the FWB is “inefficient and obsolete” and argued that its abolition should be considered. He noted that the federation has no fiscal resources and that 90% of its budget is devoted to education, leaving teaching vulnerable to budget cuts. Why maintain two governments, he asked, when the institutional architecture creates inefficiency rather than synergy for a francophone population of only about 4.5 million?

The deeper obstacles

Political scientist Pascal Delwit of ULB delivered a more fundamental warning. In comments reported by L’Avenir, he argued that Bouchez’s proposal “would change nothing” because the financing of Regions and Communities would remain identical. Delwit pointed to a “vice originel” — an original flaw — in the special financing law that governs transfers between the federal state and the entities. Without rewriting that law, he said, even a grand federation would not gain fiscal autonomy or solve the structural underfinancing of education.

Brussels is another obstacle. The capital is officially bilingual, with guaranteed protections for Dutch speakers, and any francophone reorganisation must respect those guarantees. The fact that Wallonia and Brussels do not share a border also makes a territorial merger politically awkward, even if language provides a cultural bond. The financing asymmetry reinforces the problem: the FWB depends almost entirely on federal transfers, while the Regions raise significant own revenue. Under current rules, a merger would not change that balance — Delwit’s central point.

The political geometry adds a final layer of difficulty. The MR governs at the federal level with the N-VA, a Flemish nationalist party, and some francophone parties suspect that a francophone super-federation could either serve as a counterweight to Flemish confederalism or provide ammunition for Flemish nationalists who argue that the two language groups are drifting apart. That ambiguity makes consensus even harder to reach, and it explains why Bouchez’s initiative has been received with caution even by parties that agree something should change.

What’s next

Bouchez has left the door open to a softer path: enhanced cooperation agreements between Wallonia and Brussels rather than a full institutional merger. That approach would avoid the two-thirds hurdle but, as Delwit warns, may deliver little real change. For now, the debate seems destined to continue — a recurring feature of Belgian francophone politics in which every revival produces more questions than answers. Whether the FWB can eventually be simplified, or whether it will simply disappear, is unlikely to be settled soon.