§ 1. The Senate is composed of sixty senators, of whom:
1° twenty-nine senators appointed by the Flemish Parliament from among its members or from among the members of the Dutch linguis-tic group of the Parliament of the Brussels-Capital Region;
2° ten senators appointed from among its members by the Parliament of the French Community;
3° eight senators appointed from among its members by the Parliament of the Walloon Region;
4° two senators appointed from among its members by the French lin-guistic group of the Parliament of the Brussels-Capital Region;
5° one senator appointed from among its members by the Parliament of the German-speaking Community;
6° six senators appointed by the senators referred to in 1°;
7° four senators appointed by the senators referred to in 2° to 4°.

§ 2. At least one of the senators referred to in § 1, 1° is to be legally resident in the bilingual region of Brussels-Capital on the day of his election.
Three of the senators referred to in § 1, 2° are member of the French lin-guistic group of the Parliament of the Brussels-Capital Region. As a departure from § 1, 2°, one of these three senators must not be a member of the Parlia-ment of the French Community.

§ 3. The Senate is composed of no more than two-thirds of senators of the same gender.

§ 4. When a list mentioned in Article 68, § 2 is not represented by senators respectively referred to in § 1, 1° or in § 1, 2°, 3° or 4°, the senators referred to in § 1, 6° or in § 1, 7° may be appointed by the Members of the House of Rep-resentatives who have been elected on the aforesaid list.

Transitional provision

This article comes into force on the day when elections take place with a view to the complete renewal of the Community and Regional Parliaments in 2014. Until this day, the following provisions apply:

Ҥ 1. Without prejudice to Article 72, the Senate is composed of seventy-one senators, of whom:
1° twenty-five senators elected in accordance with Article 61 by the Dutch electoral college;
2° fifteen senators elected in accordance with Article 61 by the French electoral college;
3° ten senators appointed from among its members by the Parliament of the Flemish Community, called the Flemish Parliament;
4° ten senators appointed from among its members by the Parliament of the French Community;
5° one senator appointed from among its members by the Parliament of the German-speaking Community;
6° six senators appointed by the senators referred to in 1° and 3°;
7° four senators appointed by the senators referred to in 2° and 4°.
When their Parliament is re-elected as a whole and this re-election does not coincide with the renewal of the Senate, the senators referred to in the first paragraph, 3° to 5° who no longer have a seat in their Parliament retain the mandate of senator until the opening of the first session following the re-election of their Parliament.

§ 2. At least one of the senators referred to in § 1,1°,3° and 6° is to be legally resident in the bilingual region of Brussels-Capital on the day of his election.
At least six of the senators referred to in § 1, 2°, 4° and 7° are to be legally resident in the bilingual region of Brussels-Capital on the day of their elec-tion. If at least four of the senators referred to in § 1, 2° are not legally resident in the bilingual region of Brussels-Capital on the day of their election, at least two of the senators referred to in § 1, 4° must be legally resident in the bilin-gual region of Brussels-Capital on the day of their election.”.