Turnout: 88.47%
About this election
Belgium elected 21 members of the European Parliament on 26 May 2019, on the same day as its federal and regional elections. As at the federal level, the New Flemish Alliance (N-VA) was the largest party with 14.17% of the national vote and 3 of the 21 seats, level on seats with the far-right Vlaams Belang (12.05%). The Greens of both communities, the liberals and the socialists shared most of the rest, and the German-speaking Christian Social Party took the single seat reserved for its community. Turnout was 88.47% under compulsory voting.
Belgium is a federal parliamentary constitutional monarchy whose politics are organised along a linguistic divide between Dutch-speaking Flanders, French-speaking Wallonia and bilingual Brussels. There are no national parties: each language community has its own separate party system, and voters can choose only lists in their own language group. This division shapes Belgium's European elections as much as its domestic ones, since the country sends its MEPs to Strasbourg through community-based colleges rather than as a single national bloc. The European election is also held on the same day as the federal and regional polls, binding all three together into one campaign.
Belgium is unique in the European Union in electing its MEPs through three separate language-based electoral colleges rather than a single national constituency. In 2019 the Dutch-speaking college returned 12 members, the French-speaking college 8, and the German-speaking college 1, each by proportional representation (D'Hondt). Voters in Brussels could choose to vote in either the Dutch or the French college. Because the colleges are separate electorates of very different sizes, a party's national vote share does not translate directly into seats — which is why this page shows seats rather than a single ranked map.
The European election coincided exactly with the federal and regional polls, so it was fought as part of the same campaign and shaped by the same forces: the rise of Vlaams Belang and Flemish nationalism in the north, and a "green wave" and strong far-left showing in the south. Climate, migration and the future of European integration framed the debate, but domestic Belgian politics dominated voters' attention.
In the Dutch-speaking college the N-VA and Vlaams Belang each won 3 seats, with the liberal Open Vld and Christian-democratic CD&V on 2 apiece and Groen and Vooruit (sp.a) one each. In the French-speaking college the PS, Ecolo and the MR each took 2 seats, with the PTB and the centrist cdH winning their first or sole seats. The German-speaking college returned the Christian Social Party.
Across the EU, the 2019 election saw record turnout, gains for greens and liberals, and losses for the traditional centre-left and centre-right blocs. Belgium's result mirrored these trends, with the greens advancing strongly in the Francophone south and Flemish nationalists consolidating in the north — a microcosm of the continent's fragmenting politics within a single member state.
Belgium's compulsory-voting law applies to European as well as national elections, which is why its European turnout, at 88.47%, was among the very highest in the EU — far above the bloc-wide average — and why abstention plays a far smaller role in Belgian results than elsewhere. In a typical European election turnout across the Union struggles to reach half the electorate, so Belgium's near-90% participation, shared only with Luxembourg, stands out sharply and lends its European results an unusually firm democratic mandate.
Belgium's 21 MEPs joined their respective pan-European groups: the N-VA sitting with the European Conservatives and Reformists, Vlaams Belang with the nationalist right, the socialists with the S&D, the greens with the Greens/EFA, and the liberals with Renew Europe. Belgium was due to gain a 22nd seat once the United Kingdom left the EU, which was filled after Brexit took effect.
Belgium's German-speaking Community, around 78,000 people in the east of the country near the German border, is the only linguistic minority in the EU to elect its own dedicated MEP. Its single seat has long been held by the Christian Social Party (CSP), the regional sister of the Christian-democratic family, and it represents one of the smallest electorates returning a member of the European Parliament anywhere in the Union — a distinctive feature of Belgium's accommodation of its three language groups.
Compared with 2014, the 2019 result confirmed the rise of the Flemish far right and the strength of the Francophone greens and left, while the traditional Christian-democratic and liberal families lost ground — the same erosion of the centre that was reshaping Belgium's domestic politics. The simultaneity of the European, federal and regional votes meant the European contest largely tracked these national trends rather than diverging on European questions.
Federal Public Service Interior (IBZ) election results — verkiezingen.fgov.be.
Compiled and reviewed by Bartłomiej Paruzel, Election Data Analyst, from official results. See our data methodology.