The 2006 local elections in Belgium were the first one organised after the transfer of the local authorities competences from the federal to the regional level. This means by consequence that the different regions have as well the competence in designing the institutional framework of local government as the competence of changing electoral rules. The same elections were also the first ones after drastic reforms in the national political landscape (eg., the democratic Flemish nationalist party split in different groups, nearly all the parties changed their name and particularly in the Flemish part of the country, different kinds of alliances between parties emerged).
All over the country, the Christian democrats made progress and the ecologists suffered a declining trend. For the other parties, results depend from one region to another.
In the Flemish part of the country, the socialists and the extreme right wing joined the Christian democrats as winners of the elections. The other parties lost votes. This was particularly the case for the liberals and ecologists (the winners of the 2000 local elections). Liberals are however the winners in the Walloon part of the country, together with again the Christian democrats. In this region, socialists and ecologists were set back. In the Brussels region, we noticed progress for socialists and Christian democrats and declining figures for liberals and ecologists.
Analyses of political competition, number of groups in local councils and single party majorities point out that the fragmentation of local politics is not growing. The local political landscape seems to be more stable in the Walloons compared with the Flemish region.

Although the 2006 local elections can hardly be described as ‘historical’, there is sufficient evidence to distinguish remarkable characteristics associated with this elections. For the first time in decades, turnout has been growing. This evolution can be explained by several factors. This article emphasizes besides the impact of changes in the electoral rules, transformations in demographic structure of the population and the stake of the elections the importance of the media campaign surrounding the elections. However, in spite of this (national) campaigns, there are more than enough indications that local politics keeps its local ‘nature’. Secondly, the 2006 elections were the first ones organised after the transfer of the responsibility for municipality legislation from the federal state to the regions. This means that each region designed its own local government architecture and electoral rules. Yet, in practice, the consequences of this transformations seem to be very limited. Thirdly, and particular in the Flemish region, ‘strong mayors’ arose from the ballot stations (with the Antwerp mayor as the most spectacular case). The consequences of this trend will in the future be the issue of a new debate concerning the relations between council, board of alderman and mayor.