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Communities, regions, and language areas of Belgium
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Belgium is a federal state comprising three communities and three regions that are based on four language areas. For each of these subdivision types, the subdivisions together make up the entire country; in other words, the types overlap.
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Dutch-speaking |
French-speaking | |
German-speaking |
Bilingual FR/NL | |
Community: | Region: | |
Flemish | Flanders | |
French and Flemish | Brussels | |
French | Wallonia | |
German-speaking | Wallonia |
The language areas were established by the Second Gilson Act, which entered into force on 2 August 1963. The division into language areas was included in the Belgian Constitution in 1970.[1] Through constitutional reforms in the 1970s and 1980s, regionalisation of the unitary state led to a three-tiered federation: federal, regional, and community governments were created, a compromise designed to minimize linguistic, cultural, social, and economic tensions.[2]