Belgium Belgium Belgium officially the Kingdom of Belgium, is a country in Western Europe bordered by the Netherlands to the north, Germany to the east, Luxembourg to the southeast, France to the southwest, and the North Sea to the northwest. It covers an area of and has a population of more than 11.4 million. The capital and largest city is Brussels; other major cities are Antwerp, Ghent, Charleroi and Liège. The sovereign state of Belgium is a federal constitutional monarchy with a parliamentary system of governance. Its institutional organisation is complex and is structured on both regional and linguistic grounds. It
Second city of the United Kingdom remained steady around the one million mark; its central population fell like Glasgow's, but the city boundaries were extended several times in the early 20th century. Occasional claims were made for Liverpool, Birmingham and Manchester. Since World War I, and up to the beginning of the 21st century, Birmingham had been considered by many to be the second city. Based on population within actual city boundaries the City of Birmingham, the most populous local government district in Europe, is substantially larger than the City of Manchester, which is the fifth largest in the UK (2006 estimates, see List of English