The vice-governor of Brussels

Brussels has a vice-governor, but no longer a governor: the office of governor was abolished by the sixth state reform (2014), its security duties passing to a « senior official ». The vice-governor remains — with a single mission: overseeing compliance with the language laws in the 19 municipalities and their public welfare centres (CPAS).

What it does

Appointed by the Region on the binding advice of the federal government and necessarily bilingual, the vice-governor checks the linguistic compliance of municipal and CPAS acts, in particular recruitments (does the hired official hold the required second-language certificate?). Its tool: suspending a non-compliant act within 40 days. But it cannot annul it — that is for the regional government. It submits an annual report to the Brussels Parliament. The office has been held since 2012 by Jozef Ostyn, definitively appointed in 2013.

A largely symbolic power

In practice, barely two suspensions have been followed by an actual annulment: municipalities almost always reconfirm their decisions. In 2024, only 15.4 % of the controlled files were compliant. The service runs on 4 staff, a level its reports call « critical » year after year. The office-holder himself describes the role as an « alert function » rather than a genuinely binding power.

An almost unique office

Its only true Belgian counterpart is the deputy of the governor of Flemish Brabant (for the municipalities with language facilities). In Europe it has no exact equivalent: elsewhere, linguistic guarantees run through an ombudsman or the courts, rarely through a power of suspension. Its linguistic supervision, of federal origin, adds to ordinary regional oversight — an illustration of Brussels' institutional complexity.