Meet the Council and Committee

The Council

53 councilors - seven fractions

Ghent City Council has 53 members, divided into seven political fractions. The council is the most important political body. It is the representation of the people of Ghent: the members are directly elected by the citizens of Ghent.

The governing coalition is formed by Open VLD (liberal democratic party), Groen (ecological party), sp.a (social democratic party) and CD&V (Christian democratic party). Together, they hold 35 of the 51 seats in the City Council.

The opposition parties are N-VA (Flemish nationalist party), PVDA (left-wing Labour's Party) and Vlaams Belang (right-wing extremist party).

The Executive Committee

The Executive Committee comprises the Mayor and 10 executive councillors together with the General Manager and Deputy General Manager of City of Ghent. It is the main decision making body of the Council, responsible for implementing the budgetary and policy framework of the City Council.

The executive councillors have each special responsibility for a particular area of the City Council's services and policies. However, the Executive Committee can only make decision as a collegial body, its members have no separate decision authority.

The current members of the Executive Committee are elected between the city councillors on January 3, 2019. Their mandate lasts throughout the municipal term 2019-2024 and ends with the installation of the new Executive Committee.