According to calculations by the newspaper De Tijd, the House and the Flemish Parliament are required to pay up to 20 million euros in compensation to parliamentarians who were not re-elected. This amount was even higher in 2019, coming close to 22 million euros.
In the federal parliament, 73 out of the 150 representatives who were seated before the elections did not win re-election. This includes two unelected Ecolo ministers, Marie-Colline Leroy and Georges Gilkinet, who are entitled to 12.4 million euros in exit compensation. The Flemish Parliament also has 54 non-re-elected parliamentarians who will receive a total of 7.7 million euros in stop premiums.
To ensure that these ex-parliamentarians do not lose their income immediately, they will continue to receive their salary for a period of time. The regulations of the House are generally more generous than those of the Flemish Parliament. Furthermore, MPs with many years of service are subject to an exceptional regime, as a more favorable regime was in place before 2014 and those rights are still valid.
The compensation is not automatically paid out by the parliaments, but requires an application from the affected parliamentarians. Some MPs, like Patrick Dewael and Servais Verherstraeten, have indicated that they will only apply for a portion of their compensation, while members of the PVDA-PTB faction have stated that they will not be applying for any compensation at all.