Political parties in Belgium Political parties in Belgium Belgium is a federal state with a multi-party political system, with numerous parties who factually have no chance of gaining power alone, and therefore must work with each other to form coalition governments. Almost all Belgian political parties are divided into linguistic groups, either Dutch-speaking parties (see also political parties in Flanders), Francophone parties or Germanophone parties. The Flemish parties operate in Flanders and in the Brussels-Capital Region. The Francophone parties operate in Wallonia and in the Brussels-Capital Region. There are also parties operating in the comparatively small German-speaking community. From the creation of the Belgian
2017 German federal election the Free Democrats and the Greens as that was the only viable coalition without the AfD or The Left, both of which had been ruled out by Merkel as coalition partners before the election. On 9 October 2017 Merkel officially announced that she would invite the Free Democrats and the Greens for talks about building a coalition government starting on 18 October 2017. In the final days of the preliminary talks, the four parties had still failed to come to agreement on migration and climate issues. Preliminary talks between the parties collapsed on 20 November after the FDP withdrew, arguing