In the years 1975-1976 the Belgian government has given high priority to the restructuring of local government, resp. by the means of mergers of communes: the number of communes has decreased by that way from 2,359 to 596. In the decision-making emphasized were the initiatives taken by the Minister of the Interior as well on the domain of the elaboration of the proposals to delimitate the territory of the new communes as on the domain of the defining of the terms of execution with regard to the personnel, the finances, the transition of goods, etc. About the proposals on the delimitation of the territory the local governmentscould only give advice; they have been sanctioned by the legislative assemblees at the end of 1975 after rather difficult and heated debates.During this period an important resistance developed: on the one side from the communal milieu itself and on the other side from the opposition parties, esp. the Belgian Socialist Party not participating in the government that had made the drawing of the new map of communes according to a broad plan to its aim.Nevertheless, the decision-making also has to be seen from the fact that the opposition parties agreed with the principle of the mergers: they mainly contested the way in which the mergers were executed. The abolition of the federations of communes around the Brussels agglomeration, decided in the same context, has to be seen in the light of the typical Belgian problem of the coexistence of different linguistic groups.