Spain has long recognised that certain historical, cultural or family ties justify facilitated access to its nationality. Belgium offers nothing comparable. We argue for opening a route to Belgian nationality from abroad for persons whose historical tie of belonging to the country can be established. This covers descendants of Belgians, reparation for the colonial past, and families who fled and lost their nationality in exile.
What Spain recognises
Article 22 of the Spanish Civil Code sets a ten-year residence period for ordinary access to nationality, five years for refugees, and two years for nationals of Ibero-American countries, Andorra, the Philippines, Equatorial Guinea and Portugal, as well as for persons of Sephardic origin. Law 20/2022 of 19 October 2022 on democratic memory went further. For the children and grandchildren of Spaniards who suffered exile, it opened an option for Spanish nationality of origin, exercisable from abroad and without prior residence in Spain. That right of option closed on 22 October 2025. The principle remains. A State can turn a historical tie of belonging into a route to its nationality.
In Belgium, a narrow door
The recovery of Belgian nationality is, as a rule, applied for from Belgian soil. Article 24 of the Belgian Nationality Code requires principal residence in Belgium for at least twelve months, on the basis of uninterrupted lawful residence, and an unlimited right of residence at the time of the declaration. Since the Law of 18 June 2018, an exception exists. A Belgian born abroad who lost nationality because he could not sign the declaration of conservation between the ages of eighteen and twenty-eight may file the application from the competent diplomatic post, the public prosecutor being able to set aside the residence conditions. For all other former Belgians, no equivalent route exists. They must first obtain a residence permit and settle in Belgium before any application. This Belgian nationality from abroad therefore remains reserved to a single category. Until the reform that entered into force on 9 June 2007 (Law of 27 December 2006 on various provisions), the voluntary acquisition of a foreign nationality entailed the automatic loss of Belgian nationality, under the former Article 22, § 1, 1°, of the Code. The reform ended that loss for the future. It provided nothing for those who had already suffered it, nor for their families.
Three histories, one gap
Several situations converge. First, there are the descendants of Belgians who left to live abroad, whose tie with the country remains real. Then there is the colonial question. The resolution of the Chamber of Representatives of 21 February 2018 (DOC 54 2952/001) asked the government to examine the possibility of a procedure for granting or recovering nationality for the mixed-race children born of colonisation. Case law has also recognised that persons born in the Belgian Congo to Congolese parents before 30 June 1960 held Belgian nationality and could therefore recover it (Brussels Court of Appeal, 10 August 2018, unpublished, annotated by B. Renauld, Cahiers de l’EDEM, September 2018), contrary to an earlier judgment of the Court of Cassation of 21 April 2011 (C.10.0394.F). Finally, there are the families who fled, notably Jewish families. After settling abroad, many acquired another nationality and thereby lost Belgian nationality, under the regime in force before 2007. Their Belgian roots did not disappear for all that.
A route to create
The difference in treatment between the former Belgian born abroad covered by the 2018 exception and all other former Belgians has never been justified in the preparatory works. The question of attribution of nationality to children born abroad to a Belgian parent already illustrates these time-limit gaps. For former Belgians born in Belgium, the difference is even harder to defend, since their ties to the country are the very rationale of the rules on loss and recovery. We propose extending recovery from abroad to all former Belgians, or at least to those born in Belgium. More broadly, Belgium would benefit from creating a genuine route to acquire Belgian nationality from abroad based on a recognised historical tie of belonging, including reparation for the colonial past and the situation of families who lost their nationality in exile. The Spanish example shows that such recognition is legally possible.
Céline Verbrouck
Attorney at the Brussels Bar
Specialised in immigration law, private international law, nationality law and family law
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