Wallonia's new regional parliament will be sworn in on Tuesday afternoon, as the 75 members of parliament take their seats following the ballot held last May 26.
The house will now be made up of 23 socialist MPs (-7 in relation to the previous assembly), 20 MR liberals (-5), 12 Ecolo (+8), 10 cdH (-3) and 10 PTB (+8).
At 14:00, they will meet under the leadership of André Antoine (cdH), the outgoing president, supported by Rodrigue Demeuse (Ecolo) and Rachel Sobry (MR), who will provisionally take up the secretarial functions assigned by law to the two youngest members of the assembly.
Elected representatives will be setting up three Credentials Committees charged principally with preparing the validation of elections.
MPs will be sworn in as soon as the results of the commissions' reports are approved sometime during the afternoon.
In 2014, what should have been a formality turned sour, after the Credentials Committee — in which the liberal MR party had picked up 4 out of 7 seats — blocked parliament for 3 whole days due to appeals from various electoral districts, including Liège, Verviers and Charleroi.
The procedure has since been reviewed and MPs now have to be sworn in on Tuesday afternoon.
The President of the Assembly will then be elected, just like members of the European Parliament Bureau.
The regional assembly does not allow elected MPs a seat in the regional parliament if they are also holding local office unless a high number of votes allows them to deviate from the rule.
The new parliament will thus include 31 new MPs with an average age of 46.
The Brussels Times
