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Article 68
 

§ 1. The Senate seats referred to in Article 67, § 1, 1° are distributed among the lists according to the system of proportional representation determined by the law, in the way laid down by the law, on the basis of the addition of the vote counts of the lists obtained in the different electoral districts at the elec-tion for the Flemish Parliament.
The lists of which the vote counts are added up in pursuance of the first subparagraph only qualify for being allocated Senate seats referred to in Ar-ticle 67, § 1, 1° provided that they have obtained at least one seat in the Flem-ish Parliament.
The Senate seats referred to in Article 67, § 1, 2° to 4° are distributed among the lists according to the system of proportional representation de-termined by the law, in the way laid down by the law, on the basis of the ad-dition of the vote counts of the lists obtained in the different electoral dis-tricts at the election for the Parliament of the Walloon Region and the vote counts of the lists for the French linguistic group obtained at the election for the Parliament of the Brussels-Capital Region.
The lists of which the vote counts are added up in pursuance of the third subparagraph only qualify for being allocated Senate seats referred to in Ar-ticle 67, § 1, 2° to 4° provided that they have obtained at least one seat re-spectively in the Parliament of the French Community, in the Walloon Parlia-ment and in the French linguistic group of the Parliament of the Brussels-Capital Region.
The law determines the rules for the appointment of the senators referred to in Article 67, § 1, 1° to 4°, with the exception of the detailed rules which, in pursuance of a law passed by a majority as described in Article 4, last para-graph, are laid down by the Community Parliaments, each for itself, by fed-erate law. This federate law must be passed by a two-thirds majority of the votes cast, on condition that the majority of the members of the Parliament concerned is present.
The senator referred to in Article 67, § 1, 5° is appointed by the Parliament of the German-speaking Community by absolute majority of the votes cast.


§ 2. The Senate seats referred to in Article 67, § 1, 6° to 7° are distributed among the lists according to the system of proportional representation de-termined by the law, in the way laid down by the law, on the basis of the ad-dition of the vote counts of the lists obtained at the election for the House of Representatives. The aforesaid system of proportional representation is the system which is described in Article 63, § 2 of the Constitution. A law passed by a majority as described in Article 4, last paragraph determines the elec-toral districts of which the votes are taken into consideration for distributing the seats of the senators referred to in Article 67, § 1, 6° and 7° who belong respectively to the Dutch and the French linguistic group. A list may only be taken into consideration for distributing the seats of a single linguistic group. The law determines the rules for the appointment of the senators referred to in Article 67, § 1, 6° to 7°.


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, with the exception of § 2, first sub-paragraph, last sentence. Until this day, the following provisions apply:


“§ 1. The total number of senators referred to in Article 67, § 1, 1°, 2°, 3°, 4°, 6° and 7° is divided, according to the system of proportional representa-tion that the law determines, among each linguistic group on the basis of the vote count of the lists obtained at the election of the senators referred to in Article 67, § 1, 1° and 2°.
For the appointment of the senators referred to in Article 67, § 1, 3° and 4°, only those lists are taken into consideration on which at least one senator referred to in Article 67, § 1, 1° and 2° is elected and provided that a sufficient number of members elected on this list sit, according to the case, in the Par-liament of the Flemish Community or the Parliament of the French Commu-nity.
For the appointment of the senators referred to in Article 67, § 1, 6° and 7°, only those lists are taken into consideration on which at least on senator referred to in Article 67, § 1, 1° and 2° is elected.


§ 2. For the election of the senators referred to in Article 67, § 1, 1° and 2°, voting is obligatory and secret. Voting takes place in the municipality, except in the cases that the law determines.


§ 3. For the election of senators referred to in Article 67, § 1, 1° and 2°, the law determines the electoral districts and the composition of the electoral colleges; it also determines the conditions which must be met in order to be an elector, as well as the way in which elections are conducted.
The law determines the rules for the appointment of the senators referred to in Article 67, § 1, 3° to 5°, with the exception of the detailed rules which, in pursuance of a law passed by a majority as described in Article 4, last para-graph, are laid down by the Community Parliaments, each for itself, by fed-erate law. This federate law must be adopted by a two-thirds majority of the votes cast, on condition that the majority of the members of the Parliament concerned is present.
The senator referred to in Article 67, § 1, 5° is appointed by the Parliament of the German-speaking Community by absolute majority of the votes cast.
The law determines the rules for the appointment of the senators referred to in Article 67, § 1, 6° and 7°.”.