The Belgian Senate Facing Its Abolition: From Institution to Function

Introduction

On 2 July 2026, the Chamber of Representatives adopted the revision of Article 195 of the Constitution1. The move, seemingly purely procedural, opens the way to the disappearance of the Senate — and, with it, to Belgium’s transition to a monocameral federal parliament, a first since the founding of the state in 1831. The abolition featured in the agreement of the Arizona government2; it now enters its active phase.

The event suddenly makes concrete a long-standing question: does an upper chamber still have a place in the Belgian institutional order? The answer seems self-evident to anyone observing the state of the institution. It grows complicated as soon as one distinguishes what is about to be abolished — an assembly already largely emptied of its substance — from what a second chamber is supposed to accomplish in a compound state. It will be argued here that the debate conflates two questions that ought to be kept separate, and that the procedure chosen for the abolition says as much as the decision itself. We shall examine in turn the state of the matter (I), what the Senate has become (II), the function of a second chamber in a federal state (III), the revision procedure and its shortcuts (IV), and finally what the conditions attached to the abolition reveal about the very function it purports to abolish (V).

I. A technical vote, an institutional turning point

The vote of 2 July does not abolish the Senate. It clears the first of the two steps required: rendering revisable the constitutional provisions that organise it, before the repeal proper, which will require a two-thirds majority3. The distinction matters, for it explains why a decision long announced comes to fruition only now — and why it remains uncertain.

What the turning point signifies, on the other hand, is anything but technical. Since 1831, Belgium has had a bicameral parliament. Bicameralism there was at first egalitarian, then, reform after reform, unbalanced in favour of the Chamber. Its abolition would enshrine federal monocameralism: a single assembly to pass legislation, to oversee the government, and to embody national representation. The move is not isolated; it belongs to a logic of institutional simplification that the majority parties, the N-VA foremost among them, have long championed.

II. The Senate, or what remains of it

Yet one must first gauge what is being abolished. The sixth State Reform, which entered into force in 2014, transformed the Senate profoundly4. It is no longer directly elected. It can no longer bring down the government, the relationship of confidence being established before the Chamber alone. It no longer votes on ordinary legislation.

Its composition reflects this transformation. The Senate now numbers sixty members: fifty senators appointed by the parliaments of the Communities and Regions, and ten co-opted senators according to the results obtained in the Chamber5. Among them, one senator is appointed by the Parliament of the German-speaking Community — a detail that will weigh heavily in what follows. Its powers are limited, essentially, to matters bearing on “the form of the state”: constitutional revisions, special laws relating to the institutions6. For the rest, it is granted the role of a “chamber of reflection” with modest effects.

Abolishing an assembly that does almost nothing anymore is not, in itself, a democratic scandal. We may see in it a form of institutional hygiene: ceasing to maintain the shell of a body emptied of its substance. This is the most solid argument in favour of repeal, and it must be conceded from the outset.

III. What is a second chamber for?

The debate should not, however, stop at this shell. For it conflates two distinct questions. The first: is this particular Senate useful? The answer is, largely, no. The second: does a federal state need a chamber representing its entities and protecting its minorities? That is an altogether different question — and it is the one that matters.

In the theory of federalism as in comparative practice, the second chamber is not an ornament7. It is the place where the components of the state — federated states, Länder, cantons — bear on the common decision, according to a territorial logic distinct from the strictly demographic representation of the lower chamber. The German Bundesrat, the Swiss Council of States, and the American Senate all proceed from this idea: tempering the rule of numbers with the voice of the entities. The Belgian Senate of 2014 had been reconceived precisely as a “chamber of the federated entities”, an assembly of the Communities and Regions. Its vocation was sound; it was its execution that failed. The pertinent question is therefore not whether to keep this failed institution, but by what to replace the function it was meant to fulfil.

IV. The procedure: “eight votes” and the precedent of 2012

It is here that the method becomes a subject in its own right. Revising the Belgian Constitution presupposes, in principle, a cumbersome procedure: the three branches of the federal legislative power — Chamber, Senate, and King — each adopt a declaration of revision listing the articles opened to revision; only the intersection of the three lists is revisable; there follow the dissolution of the chambers, elections, then the adoption of the amendments by the newly elected chambers, by the double two-thirds majority8. This lengthy circuit is the constitutional price of a change of this nature.

Yet the government intends to shorten it. The Prime Minister summed up the operation in a formula: “eight votes”9. The procedure is not unprecedented: in 2012, in order to permit the sixth State Reform, Article 195 had already been supplemented by a transitional provision authorising the sitting legislature to revise articles that the previous declaration had not opened10. The Venice Commission, a body of the Council of Europe, then issued a critical opinion, holding that the procedure, while remaining legally valid, departed from the spirit of the Constitution and from the protective logic of its revision procedure11. It is this same mechanism that is being reactivated today. The CRISP has, moreover, undertaken to verify whether the abolition of the Senate will “really require only eight votes” — a way of indicating that the arithmetic on display conceals a more uncertain reality12.

The point is not a minor one. A rigid revision procedure is not gratuitous cumbersomeness: it is a safeguard. It requires that fundamental changes be announced to the electorate, then confirmed by an assembly elected for that purpose. To bypass this circuit through the transitional route, even legally, amounts to revising the Constitution without the detour that gives it its legitimacy. That one should proceed thus to abolish an institution emptied of power is one thing; that one should thereby install a technique of “à la carte” revision is another, whose reach extends far beyond the fate of the Senate.

V. What the conditions reveal

There remains the most revealing point of all. To assemble the two-thirds majority, the government must win support beyond its coalition. The Socialist Party makes its vote conditional on inscribing the right to abortion in the Constitution and calls, in replacement of the Senate, for a citizens’ assembly13. The MR and Les Engagés, for their part, demand that the representation of German-speakers be guaranteed in the future federal assembly14.

These conditions are not incidental bargaining chips: they say what is essential. No sooner is it decided to abolish the chamber than the function it carried resurfaces, intact — representing the components of the country, giving a voice to those whom numbers might crush. The German-speaking minority, to whom the Senate reserved a seat, does not disappear because the assembly is closed; another place must at once be found for it. The demand for a citizens’ assembly, whatever its merit, confesses the same need: that of a place of deliberation distinct from the political chamber. A function does not die with the body that, for better or worse, answered to it.

Conclusion

Does Belgium still need an upper chamber? Posed in this way, the question is ill-posed. The Senate issuing from 2014 scarcely deserves to be defended: it is a failed institution, and its repeal is conceivable. But the function that a second chamber fulfils in a federal state — articulating unity and diversity, protecting minorities, making the entities heard at the heart of the common decision — does not evaporate because a room is closed. The very conditions of the abolition demonstrate this.

Two requirements, therefore, should accompany this matter. On the substance: not to conflate the abolition of an institution with the response to the function it exercised, and to state clearly how the Regions, the Communities, and the minorities will continue to carry weight at the federal level. On the method: to recognise that a constitutional revision of this magnitude, conducted through the transitional route, engages far more than the fate of a chamber — it touches on the manner in which a state grants itself the right to rewrite itself. Reducing the number of chambers is an accounting gesture; rethinking the balance of a federation is a political one. Until the second has been made, nothing will have been reformed: things will merely have been tidied away.

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1. RTBF, “Réforme du Sénat : la Chambre approuve la révision de l’article 195 de la Constitution”, 3 July 2026. ↩

2. Federal government agreement (the so-called “Arizona” coalition), 2025, which lists the abolition of the Senate among its institutional objectives. ↩

3. Belgian Constitution, Art. 195 (two-thirds majority required for any revision). ↩

4. Sixth State Reform, laws and constitutional revisions entered into force in 2014. ↩

5. Belgian Constitution, Art. 67 (composition of the Senate since 2014: fifty senators of the federated entities and ten co-opted senators, one of whom is appointed by the Parliament of the German-speaking Community). ↩

6. Belgian Constitution, Arts. 77 and 78 (allocation of powers between the two chambers). ↩

7. On the territorial function of the second chamber in federal states, see in particular A. Lijphart, Patterns of Democracy, New Haven, Yale University Press; for Belgium, the analyses of the CRISP on the reform of the Senate. ↩

8. Belgian Constitution, Art. 195 (declaration of revision, dissolution, adoption by the constituent chambers by the double two-thirds majority). ↩

9. Statement by Prime Minister B. De Wever, reported by the press (2026). ↩

10. Revision of Article 195 of the Constitution of 29 March 2012 (transitional provision), Moniteur belge. ↩

11. European Commission for Democracy through Law (Venice Commission), opinion on the revision of Article 195 of the Belgian Constitution, CDL-AD(2012)010. ↩

12. C. Istasse, “La suppression du Sénat ne nécessitera-t-elle vraiment que huit votes ?”, Courrier hebdomadaire du CRISP, 2026. ↩

13. Positions of the Socialist Party reported by the press (RTBF, La Libre), 2026. ↩

14. Conditions set by the MR and Les Engagés regarding the representation of German-speakers (RTBF, La Libre), 2026. ↩