Cabinet d'avocats Altea
Cabinet d'avocats Altea
Slide One

Administrative and Constitutional Law
Immigration Law
international Family Law

Slide One

Administrative and Constitutional Law
Immigration Law
international Family Law

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Belgium city hall Brussel

Automatic enrolment in the population registers in Belgium

Have you retained a pied-à-terre in Belgium? Have you permanently returned from abroad? Your municipality could take the lead by enrolling you automatically in its registers. This sometimes happens on the initiative of a complainant who might have an interest in your enrolment at another address, for example, in the case of a family dispute.

In principle, when a person establishes his residence in a Belgian municipality without having registered or regularised his situation, or when he establishes his residence in another municipality without having declared his change of residence, he is automatically entered in the registers.

In practice, this means that the presence of the person concerned is recorded by a registrar in the relevant municipality, who draws up a report based on facts (the place that the person returns to after his or her work, the location of the school(s) attended by any children, the place of work, energy consumption and telephone costs, the usual length of stay of a spouse or other member of the household, etc.). This procedure may arise from a complaint or a denunciation.

Here, we must distinguish two cases:

  • If the person has never been registered in a Belgian municipality, they are registered automatically from the date on which their presence has been noted.
  • If the person concerned has failed to declare their change of residence, they will be summoned to the municipal administration to make this declaration. If they do not follow up on the summons, automatic registration will only take place on the date on which their presence is noted.

In the event of a dispute, the file can be sent to the Belgian Federal Public Service (FPS) of the Interior. Following a population survey by the services of the FPS of the Interior, automatic registration may also be carried out on the basis of a decision of the Minister of the Interior.

Céline Verbrouck
Attorney
ALTEA

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- Constitutional and administrative public law;

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Altea covers many intertwining areas but the firm’s lawyers all have an interest in defending human rights.

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