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
Slovak Democratic Coalition law, which restricted candidature of such coalitions. As a reaction of passing an "anti-coalition" law, the SDK transferred itself from electoral coalition into a political party with 150 members, with each one being a candidate into the parliament. Although Movement for a Democratic Slovakia narrowly won the parliamentary election in 1998 with 27% of the vote, it was unable to form a government coalition. Instead, the SDK, which finished second with 26.33% of the vote formed government coalition with three other parties - Party of the Democratic Left (SDĽ) (14.66%), Party of the Hungarian Coalition (SMK) (9.12%) and Party of