Final agreement: West Flanders divided into five regions
The province of West Flanders is not divided into three, but into five regions: the Bruges region, the Ostend region, the Westhoek, the Midwest region and South West Flanders.
The aim of the regionalization is to counteract administrative fragmentation and to get rid of the tangle of local collaborations between waste intermunicipal authorities, police zones, assistance zones, and so on.
The intention is that from now on municipalities will no longer set up collaborations themselves across the borders of the regions. The regions themselves can enter into partnerships with each other. In exceptional cases, larger collaborations, such as the consultation of the coastal mayors, can also take place alongside the regions.
No new management layer
“The regions are not a new layer of government,” emphasizes Bart Somers, Minister of the Interior. “This is not about organizing new elections or additional structures. On the contrary, the regions are merging existing structures and cutting back on the more than 2,200 existing partnerships. We are tackling administrative fragmentation. Since local authorities are increasingly collaborating with the same municipalities, one can drastically simplify in the number of structures.”
The municipalities now have ten years to adapt their partnerships to the new reality.