Belgium

Belgium's digital-accessibility regime sits on top of one of the most distinctive constitutional architectures in the European Union. Three Communities (Flemish, French-speaking, German-speaking) and three Regions (Flemish, Walloon, Brussels-Capital) share competence with the Federal State, and each level legislates separately in the disability-policy space. The Web Accessibility Directive (WAD, 2016/2102) and the European Accessibility Act (EAA, 2019/882) have therefore been transposed multiple times in parallel — by the Federal State and by each Community and Region for the public administrations within its competence. The 2007 federal Anti-Discrimination Act (Loi du 10 mai 2007 / Antidiscriminatiewet) and the 2021 amendment inserting Article 22ter into the Constitution provide the common doctrinal floor across all six layers.

The Belgian institutional puzzle: who legislates what

Under the 1993 federal-state reform, legislative competence is divided across three Communities and three Regions in addition to the Federal State. The three Communities — the Flemish Community (Vlaamse Gemeenschap), the French Community / Wallonia-Brussels Federation (Communauté française), and the German-speaking Community (Deutschsprachige Gemeinschaft) — hold competence over "person-related" matters including education, culture and most of disability policy. The three Regions — Flemish (Vlaams Gewest), Walloon (Région wallonne) and Brussels-Capital (Région de Bruxelles-Capitale / Brussels Hoofdstedelijk Gewest) — hold competence over territorial matters including the websites of regional administrations. The Federal State retains residual competence and reserved areas (justice, social security, federal public services).

For digital accessibility, each EU directive has therefore been transposed up to seven times. The 2018 federal Web Accessibility Act covers federal-level public bodies; the Flemish Community and Region adopted parallel Bestuursdecreet provisions in 2018–2019; the Walloon Region and French Community legislated by parallel decree in 2019; the Brussels-Capital Region adopted its ordonnance in 2019; and the German-speaking Community filed its decree in late 2019. The 2024 EAA Implementation Act follows the same logic on the private-sector side, with coordination through the Inter-Ministerial Conference on Persons with Disabilities (CIM Handicap / IMC Handicap) for slices that touch regional competences. The federal Anti-Discrimination Act and UNIA's interfederal mandate give the stack coherence as a single rights regime; the EU directives give the technical obligations identical substance across jurisdictions.

The constitutional and treaty floor

Belgium's constitutional anchor on disability rights is comparatively recent. Article 22ter was inserted into the Constitution by the constitutional revision of 17 March 2021, after a multi-year campaign by disability-rights organisations and a unanimous vote in both Federal Chambers. The clause reads, in the French version: "Chaque personne en situation de handicap a droit à une pleine inclusion dans la société, en ce compris le droit à des aménagements raisonnables" — "every person with a disability has the right to full inclusion in society, including the right to reasonable accommodation." The parallel Dutch text uses "redelijke aanpassingen" for "reasonable accommodation," and the German-language official translation uses "angemessene Vorkehrungen."

Article 22ter has two doctrinal effects. First, it constitutionalises the reasonable-accommodation obligation that until 2021 lived only in the federal Anti-Discrimination Act and the parallel regional decrees. Second, it opens a constitutional-review hook before the Constitutional Court (Cour constitutionnelle / Grondwettelijk Hof) for legislation alleged to fall below the inclusion floor.

Belgium signed the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities on 30 March 2007 and ratified it, together with the Optional Protocol, on 2 July 2009; the Convention entered into force for Belgium on 1 August 2009. The CRPD Committee's 2024 Concluding Observations on Belgium's combined second and third periodic report singled out the segmentation of disability competence across the seven Belgian legislative layers as a persistent challenge, while welcoming the 2021 insertion of Article 22ter and the 2024 EAA transposition. The next periodic review is scheduled for 2028.

Public-sector accessibility: the WAD path

Directive (EU) 2016/2102 — the Web Accessibility Directive — was transposed federally through the Loi du 19 juillet 2018 relative à l'accessibilité des sites internet et des applications mobiles des organismes du secteur public (Wet van 19 juli 2018 inzake de toegankelijkheid van de websites en mobiele applicaties van overheidsinstanties). The act applies to every federal-level public-sector body — federal public services (SPF / FOD), federal scientific establishments, social-security institutions, public-interest establishments, and federally-controlled bodies meeting the EU's expanded "public sector body" definition — and imposes three substantive obligations:

• Conformance with EN 301 549 (currently v3.2.1, integrating WCAG 2.1 Level AA), pending the formal update of EN 301 549 to track WCAG 2.2.
• Accessibility statement published in French and Dutch (and German where applicable), covering conformance status, disproportionate-burden carve-outs, and the complaint mechanism; filed into the federal registry maintained by BOSA at accessibility.belgium.be.
• Feedback and enforcement procedure — users can submit complaints to the in-scope body; unresolved complaints escalate to BOSA as the federal enforcement body and, in parallel, to UNIA as the equality-body backstop.

The federal enforcement body is the Federal Public Service for Policy and Support (SPF Stratégie et Appui / FOD Beleid en Ondersteuning, BOSA). BOSA's AccessibleWeb / Accessibility.belgium.be programme runs the periodic monitoring required by Commission Decision (EU) 2018/1523. The corresponding regional and community bodies — the Flemish Agentschap Binnenlands Bestuur, the Walloon e-Wallonie-Bruxelles Simplification (eWBS), the Brussels-Capital CIRB / CIBG, and the German-speaking Community's Ministry — run parallel monitoring inside their own jurisdictions and exchange data with BOSA twice a year. AnySurfer — a Brussels-based non-profit operating under Blindenzorg Licht en Liefde since 2002 — is the de facto national accessibility-audit reference, and its auditors are routinely engaged by BOSA and the regional bodies on the in-depth monitoring slice.

Private-sector accessibility: the EAA path

The European Accessibility Act — Directive (EU) 2019/882 — was transposed into Belgian federal law by the Loi du 23 mars 2024 transposant la directive (UE) 2019/882 (Wet van 23 maart 2024 tot omzetting van richtlijn (EU) 2019/882), known as the Implementatiewet 2024 on the Dutch side and the Loi d'implémentation 2024 on the French side. The royal decrees containing the secondary legislation were issued in three batches between October 2024 and April 2025; the substantive obligations took effect on the EU-wide application date of 28 June 2025.

The Act covers the directive's full product and service scope: computer hardware and operating systems, self-service terminals (ATMs, ticket machines, check-in kiosks), consumer terminal equipment used to access audiovisual media services and electronic communications services, and e-readers on the product side; electronic communications services, audiovisual media access services, elements of air-, bus-, rail- and waterborne passenger transport, consumer banking, e-books and dedicated software, and e-commerce on the service side. The act incorporates the directive's micro-enterprise carve-out (fewer than 10 employees and turnover/balance-sheet total ≤€2 million exempt from the service-side obligations) and the long transitional period for terminals already in use on 28 June 2025 (run-out until 28 June 2045 or end of economically-useful life).

The designated market-surveillance authority is the FPS Economy (SPF Économie / FOD Economie). The FPS Economy hosts a dedicated EAA market-surveillance department within its General Directorate for Quality and Safety and coordinates with sectoral regulators: the National Bank of Belgium (BNB / NBB) on consumer banking; the BIPT / IBPT on electronic communications; and the CSA (Conseil supérieur de l'audiovisuel) and VRM (Vlaamse Regulator voor de Media) on audiovisual services. Cross-border market surveillance follows EU Regulation (EU) 2019/1020 and is coordinated through ICSMS.

The cross-cutting backstop: the 2007 Anti-Discrimination Act

The Loi du 10 mai 2007 tendant à lutter contre certaines formes de discrimination (Antidiscriminatiewet van 10 mei 2007) — in force since 9 June 2007 — recognises disability as one of the protected characteristics ("l'état de santé actuel ou futur, un handicap, une caractéristique physique ou génétique") and prohibits direct and indirect discrimination, harassment, instruction to discriminate, and the refusal to provide reasonable accommodation. The act creates UNIA's predecessor entity (the Centre for Equal Opportunities and Opposition to Racism, restructured into UNIA in 2014) as the independent equality body with standing to bring proceedings on behalf of victims, to issue recommendations, and to act as amicus curiae in litigation.

UNIA's docket on digital-accessibility-as-discrimination has grown steadily since 2015, with settlements involving Belgian retail banks over inaccessible mobile-banking apps, the SNCB / NMBS settlement of 2019 over inaccessible ticketing kiosks, and several federal and regional administrations over inaccessible online services. The standard remedy is a structured remediation timeline supervised by UNIA; financial settlements typically include the statutory lump-sum moral-damage award of €650 (or €1,300 in aggravated circumstances). Civil claims for actual damages run in parallel before the labour courts (employment context) or the courts of first instance (otherwise). The combination of UNIA's investigative powers, the labour courts' willingness to award damages, and the constitutional reinforcement of Article 22ter has kept the 2007 Act the doctrinal heart of Belgian disability-rights enforcement.

Sign-language recognition and the Communities

Sign-language recognition in Belgium reflects the Community division. French Belgian Sign Language (LSFB) is recognised by the French Community decree of 22 October 2003; Flemish Sign Language (Vlaamse Gebarentaal, VGT) by the Flemish Community decree of 5 May 2006; and German Sign Language as used in the German-speaking community by the decree of 26 March 2018. Each decree establishes a standing advisory commission, provides for interpretation services in defined contexts (court proceedings, public-administration contacts, education), and feeds into the audiovisual-media obligations under the EAA's service scope.

Technical standards and conformance

Both the WAD track (public sector) and the EAA track (private sector) anchor on EN 301 549 v3.2.1, importing WCAG 2.1 Level AA as the web-content baseline and adding requirements for mobile applications, native software, non-web documents, hardware, and communications functionality. The ETSI / CEN-CENELEC update to integrate WCAG 2.2 is in progress; once published, BOSA and the FPS Economy are both expected to track the new version on a transitional schedule.

The royal decree of 11 February 2025 (secondary legislation under the EAA Implementation Act) sets out the conformity-assessment procedures, the form of the EU Declaration of Conformity, the technical-file requirements, the CE-marking interaction, and the language regime — declarations must be issued in French, Dutch and (where the product or service is supplied in the German-speaking region) German. WAD accessibility statements follow the Commission's Implementing Decision (EU) 2018/1523 model verbatim; the EAA's private-sector "information for consumers" notice is lighter but must likewise be published in French and Dutch (and German where applicable).

Penalties — the full exposure stack

As elsewhere in the EU, the administrative-fine table is only the floor of a five-layer exposure stack: (1) administrative fines under the federal EAA Implementation Act, the federal WAD Act, and the parallel regional and community decrees; (2) civil discrimination damages under the 2007 Act; (3) public-procurement disqualification; (4) consumer-protection class exposure under the federal Code of Economic Law; and (5) EU Commission infringement procedures against the Kingdom of Belgium. All figures below are in euros.

Layer 1 — administrative fines

The EAA's Article 30 requires penalties that are "effective, proportionate, and dissuasive"; the 2024 Implementation Act delivers this through tiered administrative fines, mirrored across the regional decrees. The 2007 Anti-Discrimination Act adds a separate criminal-fine column for the most serious cases, including aggravated refusal of reasonable accommodation.

Belgium's "very serious" tier ceiling sits at the median of the EU-wide spread. By way of comparison: Germany's BFSG §37 caps single-incident fines at €100,000; France's 2023 transposition allows up to €50,000 per non-conforming product with per-day penalties; Spain's Ley 11/2023 reaches €1,000,000; Italy's transposition (D.Lgs. 82/2022) caps at €40,000; the Netherlands has signalled exposure up to 5% of annual turnover. The criminal-fine route under the 2007 Act is available as an additional Belgian-specific layer for aggravated cases.

Layer 2 — civil discrimination damages

Beyond the administrative-fine track, complainants under the 2007 Anti-Discrimination Act may pursue civil claims for material and non-material damages. The Act provides a statutory lump-sum award of €650 for moral damages (raised to €1,300 in aggravated circumstances), available without proof of actual harm. Claims for actual damages — lost income, additional accommodation costs, medical expenses — run on top of the statutory lump sum and are uncapped. UNIA's strategic-litigation function has steadily expanded the body of case-law applying these awards in digital-accessibility contexts.

Layer 3 — public-procurement disqualification

Belgian public procurement (federal Public Procurement Act of 17 June 2016 plus parallel regional regimes) requires contracting authorities to consider accessibility from the technical-specification stage and allows disqualification of bidders found to have committed serious professional misconduct — a category that includes adjudicated discrimination decisions under the 2007 Act and significant administrative-penalty findings under the EAA Implementation Act. Federal IT and audiovisual contracts typically run €500,000 to several million euros, and bid disqualification can exceed any administrative fine by one to two orders of magnitude.

Layer 4 — consumer-protection and class exposure

Book VI and Book XVII of the federal Code of Economic Law (Code de droit économique / Wetboek van economisch recht) provide the consumer-protection and class-action framework. Belgium introduced a class-action mechanism in 2014 (the action en réparation collective, Articles XVII.35 et seq.), allowing a designated consumer-protection association or an equality body (UNIA qualifies for disability-discrimination claims) to bring a collective action. The first wave of accessibility-related collective actions has not yet been filed but the procedural framework is in place.

Layer 5 — EU Commission infringement procedures (state-level)

The 2025 Commission communication on financial sanctions sets the indicative minimum lump-sum payment for failure to comply with a previous CJEU judgment at €2,408,000 for Belgium, with daily penalty payments calculated from a base of approximately €2,500–€15,000 per day multiplied by severity and duration coefficients. The Commission opened an EU-Pilot procedure against Belgium in 2022 over slow WAD-monitoring throughput; the procedure was closed in 2024 after BOSA's published catch-up plan. An EAA-related procedure remains a credible 2026–28 risk.

Enforcement record and outlook

WAD enforcement under BOSA has been steady. The federal monitoring methodology produces twice-yearly simplified scans of approximately 1,500 in-scope federal websites and a smaller in-depth-scan tranche of around 50 sites per cycle, with parallel monitoring in the Flemish, Walloon, Brussels-Capital and German-speaking jurisdictions feeding a consolidated annual report. Findings trigger remedial-action orders first, with administrative penalties reserved for persistent refusal to engage. The first cohort of WAD penalty decisions (2023–2025) has remained small, with most regulatory pressure channelled through UNIA's discrimination-file mechanism instead.

EAA enforcement under the FPS Economy started only on 28 June 2025 and is still in its first surveillance cycle as of mid-2026. The Economy's published 2025–2026 plan prioritises banking-app accessibility, e-commerce checkout accessibility, self-service ticketing kiosks across SNCB / NMBS and STIB / MIVB networks, e-book reader devices, and electronic-communications services. The first round of EAA penalty decisions is expected in the second half of 2026, with the FPS Economy signalling a 90-day corrective-action grace period except in cases of egregious or repeated non-compliance.

UNIA's caseload on digital-inaccessibility-as-discrimination remains the most active enforcement strand of the three. UNIA's 2024 and 2025 annual reports cite settlements with two major Belgian retail banks, two regional public-administration portals, one national online-pharmacy platform, and one major audiovisual on-demand service. The underlying discrimination findings, once published in UNIA's recommendation archive, serve as both doctrinal precedent and an indicator of regulatory expectation.

What's coming in 2026–27

Three developments to watch. First, the royal decrees implementing the EAA continue to be issued through 2026, covering detailed technical-file requirements, the procedure for designating notified bodies, and inter-administrative coordination between federal and regional market-surveillance bodies. Second, BOSA announced in March 2025 an updated federal methodology to align Belgium's WAD monitoring with WCAG 2.2 once EN 301 549 formally tracks the new version, with parallel updates expected from the regional regulators. Third, the first judgments applying Article 22ter as a reinforcement of the reasonable-accommodation obligation are expected through 2026–27, and the CRPD Committee's next periodic review in 2028 will keep institutional pressure on the federal-regional coordination question that the 2024 Concluding Observations flagged.