Exactly four months before the national elections on 9 June, strict rules come into force for Belgian political parties and their spending habits on Friday.
The 'black-out period' is taking effect as a debate around exorbitant year-round spending gathers pace. Parties are now allowed to only spend a maximum of €1 million on electoral campaigning in the next four months.
Separate spending limits apply to individual candidates, with the figure varying depending on the amount of voters per constituency. There is an additional ban on billboard posters and gift-giving to prospective voters. This is the only time of the year when party spending is regulated.
The impact of regulations on social media campaigning is ambivalent: while expenditure must be recorded by the budget, online advertising costs are not subjected to any limits.
Analysis conducted by activist organisation AdLens revealed that political parties spent a record-breaking €6 million on Facebook and Instagram ads in 2023, far exceeding spending in any other European country. Far-right Flemish parties N-VA and Vlaams Belang alone spent €1.6 million each.
AdLens noted that parties ramped up spending at the beginning of this year, probably in anticipation of stricter regulation from 9 February. Flemish parties spent €600,000 on online ads in January and €135,000 in the first five days of February.
Vooruit spokesperson Niels Pattyn has acknowledged this link. "The fact that we spend more in January is not so much because we hit a ceiling during the black-out period, but because the black-out period makes it more complicated due to all kinds of rules," he told De Morgen.
Pivotal moment
Citizen's Assembly 'We Need To Talk' has emerged as the key actor pushing change in terms of political party spending. The Assembly presented 34 recommendations aiming to control and ultimately reduce government funding of Belgium's top political parties in January.
Parties now have until 20 February to express their positions on each of the recommendations and a debate on the proposals will take place on 28 February.
In the meantime, Flemish liberal party Vooruit has tabled a bill on an outright ban on online advertising during the electoral black-out despite being the third-highest spender of 2024 so far (€62,700 on Google Ads in January alone).
"It may seem absurd, but we would be shooting ourselves in the foot by not participating on social media," a party spokesperson said. "And only spending a small amount on it makes no sense, because then your messages will go unnoticed. That is precisely why we are in favour of a ban. If all parties stop advertising, politicians can save tens of millions of euros in party financing."
