Jacques Van Gompel was a Belgian politician of the Socialist Party who served as Mayor of Charleroi, one of Belgium’s largest cities and the primary post-industrial urban centre of the south, from 1995 to 2006, preceded by more than a decade as an alderman and first alderman of the same city, and whose long career in the governance of Charleroi was marked in its later stages by fraud allegations that resulted in a conviction that was subsequently overturned on appeal. He died on 21 August 2026 at the age of 79.
He was born on 12 June 1947 in Gilly, a municipality in the greater Charleroi area in the province of Hainaut in the Walloon region of Belgium. Hainaut is the industrial province that formed the heartland of Belgian steel production, coal mining, and heavy manufacturing since the industrial revolution, and it was also the demographic and electoral core of the Belgian socialist movement. The Socialist Party in Wallonia was the dominant political force in the industrial cities of the region for most of the twentieth century, and politicians from working-class Hainaut backgrounds built their careers through the interlinked structures of the labour movement, the cooperative sector, and the municipal governance of the cities that were the base of socialist electoral strength.
He began in local politics as a councillor in Gilly from 1970 to 1976, then moved to the Charleroi city council from 1979. He served as Alderman from 1983 to 1988, responsible for portfolios that gave him direct involvement in the management of a city already facing the consequences of industrial decline as the steel and coal sectors that had been the economic foundation of the region contracted under the pressure of global competition and energy cost changes that made the Walloon industrial economy uncompetitive. He served as First Alderman from 1989 to 1995, the deputy mayoral role that gave him the most comprehensive involvement in the day-to-day governance of the city, before being elected Mayor in 1995. He also served briefly as a member of the Belgian federal parliament in 1978, though he resigned in 1983 to concentrate on Charleroi’s local governance.
His mayoral tenure from 1995 to 2006 covered one of the most challenging decades in Charleroi’s post-industrial transition. The city had lost tens of thousands of industrial jobs across the preceding two decades and needed sustained investment in new economic activity, urban renewal, and social services to address the resulting unemployment and social distress. Charleroi’s political and administrative situation during this period was complex, involving the management of large public enterprises, urban development projects, and social programmes that required coordination between the city, the province, the regional government, and the federal level. In 2006 he resigned as mayor following fraud and forgery charges that emerged from investigations into public procurement and contracting in the city. He was convicted in 2011 and sentenced to eighteen months imprisonment, but a 2013 appeal resulted in a complete acquittal, restoring his reputation in the final phase of his life. He was 79 years old.