Berchem-Sainte-Agathe: good transparency, coalition renewed

A stable coalition renewed

Berchem-Sainte-Agathe is a small municipality of 25,800 inhabitants led by Christian Lamouline (Les Engagés). The Engagés-PS-Ecolo coalition was renewed for the 2024-2030 term with 21/29 seats.

Transparency: 5 out of 6 criteria

The budget and council minutes (via the EDITORIA platform) are published online, the council is broadcast via livestream on YouTube (channel 1082berchem), the mandate registry is accessible, and the municipality has a dedicated citizen participation platform. No Open Data portal.

Citizen participation: dedicated platform

Berchem-Sainte-Agathe has a digital participation platform (particip.berchem.brussels) inviting citizens to co-build the municipality's future.

Recent developments

The municipality will welcome its first secondary school in September 2026, filling a historic gap. The Cité Moderne (Art Deco architectural heritage) is undergoing a renovation programme. The 2026 budget was adopted with no tax increase. The CPAS has deployed a chatbot to improve services for beneficiaries.

Aircraft noise: the municipality joins the regional action (29 June 2026)

The Berchem-Sainte-Agathe municipal council voted unanimously on 29 June 2026 to join the environmental cessation action launched by the Brussels Region against the intensive use of Brussels Airport's 07L landing runway, which flies over north-west Brussels. According to the municipality, up to 96% of landings on this route violated Brussels noise regulations in April 2026 — a figure not yet corroborated by an independent source. This step is part of a long-running municipal file: a 2023 motion, a 2024 appeal.

See the cross-cutting Overflight of Brussels dossier →

Sources: BX1 (29 June 2026); regional context confirmed by RTBF, La Libre and L'Avenir (11 June 2026). Confidence: official for joining the legal action; the 96% figure is attributed to the municipality, not independently verified.

Berchem-Sainte-Agathe: the CPAS food aid caseload rises 20% in five months (11 August 2026)

The CPAS of Berchem-Sainte-Agathe reported on Tuesday 11 August 2026 how its food aid has evolved: the number of food-parcel recipients went from 520 in March to 625 in July 2026, a rise of 20% in five months, about a hundred additional people in a municipality of roughly 25,000 inhabitants.

The CPAS links this rise to the first unemployment exclusions that took effect on 1 January 2026, targeting people with more than twenty years out of work.

Two curves crossing

The centre also reports that the budget for buying foodstuffs through FEAD and ESF+, the European funds for aid to the most deprived, fell from 27 million euros in 2025 to 15 million in 2026. For the CPAS this means a falling volume of received supplies at the very moment demand is rising.

That is the core mechanism of this file seen from a municipality: demand rises because of a federal reform, aid in kind falls because of a European and federal arbitration, and the gap is absorbed by a municipal centre. The CPAS says it kept its service running without interruption.

What this figure is not: a region-wide extrapolation. It covers a single municipality, one of the Region's smallest, and food parcels cover neither the integration income nor one-off financial assistance.

Sources: La DH (11 August 2026). Confidence: estimated. The figures are the CPAS's own, reported by a single newsroom; they could not be cross-checked against a publication by the centre or the municipality, and the FEAD/ESF+ budget trend is quoted from the CPAS chair without reference to a budget document.