councils are held every six years. The next federal election will be held in 2014, the next community and regional elections are expected in 2014 as well and the next municipal and provincial elections in October 2012. Political parties in Flanders Flemish political parties are many and varied. They operate in the Flemish region and in the bilingual Brussels-Capital Region. Francophone parties operate in Flemish Region only in a few areas bordering the latter. There are no major representative parties operating all over Belgium. Flemish politics is dominated by political parties representing the different ideologies that can be found everywhere in Flanders. There are no political parties specific for certain sub-regions. From the creation of the Belgian state in 1830, and throughout most of the 19th century, two unified political parties dominated Belgian politics: the Catholic Party (Church-oriented and conservative) and the Liberal Party (anti-clerical and progressive). In the late 19th century the Socialist Party arose to represent the emerging industrial working class. These three groups still dominate Belgian politics, but they have evolved substantially in character. In addition, several other parties were founded, notably the Vlaams Belang, a right wing, anti-immigration and Flemish-nationalistic party and currently the second most important party in Flanders, Volksunie, which split into the left-liberal SPIRIT and the right-conservative N-VA, for moderate Flemish nationalists, and Agalev, currently called Groen! for the Greens. Catholics/Christian Democrats After World War II, the Catholic (now Christian Democratic) Party severed its formal ties with the Church. It became a mass party of the centre. In 1968, the Christian Democratic Party, responding to linguistic tensions in the country, divided into two independent parties: the Parti Social Chrétien (PSC) in French-speaking Belgium and the Christelijke Volkspartij (CVP) in Flanders. The two parties pursue the same basic policies but have wholly separate organizations. The CVP is the larger of the two, getting more than twice as many votes as the PSC. Following the 1999 general elections, the CVP was ousted from office, bringing an end to a 40-year term on the government benches. In 2001, the CVP changed its name to CD&V (Christen-Democratisch en Vlaams). The current chairman of the CD&V is Sammy Mahdi. Socialists/Social Democrats The Socialist Party – Differently (SP.a, Socialistische Partij Anders) has shed nearly all of its early Marxist ideology. It is now primarily a social-democratic party, similar to labor-based parties like the German Social Democratic Party. The Socialists