Communities, regions and language areas of Belgium of Belgium. It has a surface area of , or 55.18% of Belgium, and is also divided into 5 provinces which contain a total of 262 municipalities. Its capital is Namur. The official languages are French and, only in the nine eastern municipalities that form the German-speaking Community near the German border, German. Dutch however, may be used for administrative purposes in the four "municipalities with language facilities" at the border with Flanders, and German in two such municipalities near the German-speaking Community. The Walloon Region contains five provinces: Hainaut, Walloon Brabant, Namur, Liège and Luxembourg. Communities, regions and language
German-speaking Community of Belgium cultural matters, but it still remains part of the region of predominantly French-speaking Wallonia. There has been much argument in the past few years that the German-speaking Community should also become its own region, which is an ongoing process with the permanent transfer with the previous accord of some competences concerning social policy, conservation of sites and monuments, environment protection policy, transport, the financing of municipalities, among other things from the Walloon Region. One of the proponents of full regional autonomy for the German-speaking Community is Karl-Heinz Lambertz, the minister-president from 1999 to 2014. Especially regional autonomy for spatial planning,