Fusion of the Belgian municipalities

[a 1] However, the French authorities wanted to reduce the number of communes in the Belgian départements, and urged the departmental prefects to take measures to that effect.

[a 2] Thus, in 1896, the hamlet called La Bretagne separated from Landelies (part of Montigny-le-Tilleul since 1977) to become an autonomous commune under the name Goutroux.

The Treaty of London (1839) led Belgium to cede part of its territory, forming the Province of Limburg (Netherlands) and the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg.

[a 3] On the eve of the First World War, two solutions were put forward: grouping the outlying communes with Brussels, or creating an inter-communal structure to manage certain responsibilities.

[a 7][5] A ministerial circular of 1957 and a policy declaration by the Eyskens III Government in November 1958 encouraged small communes to merge.

[a 7] This led to the Unitary Law of 14 February 1961, which introduced new provisions to facilitate mergers of communes by giving the government the right to carry out such regroupings for a period of ten years.

[5] At the end of this ten-year period, in 1971, Lucien Harmegnies, Minister of the Interior under the Eyskens IV Government (1968–1972), decided to proceed with the remembrement of the territory and had a new law passed on 23 July 1971.

[6][7] This broadened the scope of the Unitary Law to make it applicable in the case of large conurbations, initially excluded from these provisions.

[a 9] Several criteria were used to group communes together, such as financial, geographical, linguistic, economic, social or cultural elements, without altering the boundaries of the administrative districts and provinces unless they were justified under the law of 23 July 1971.

[a 12] Having obtained a six-year reprieve, in the course of 1982, two decrees and two laws regulated the details of the merger of the communes of Antwerp, Berchem, Borgerhout, Deurne, Ekeren, Hoboken, Merksem and Wilrijk for 1 January 1983.

[13] On 17 September 2010, the note concluded "Following the debate on the advisability of merging communes, the group recommends reviewing communal boundaries crossing obstacles such as railroads or roadways.