New Criminal Code In Belgium: What Corporates Should Expect?

• Published date: 06 August 2021
• Subject Matter: Government, Public Sector, Criminal Law, Government Contracts, Procurement & PPP, Crime
• Law Firm: Loyens & Loeff
• Author: Ms Clémence Van Muylder

The present newsletter is the first issue of a series of five, which will explore the large piece of legislation recasting the Belgian Criminal Code. Our two first issues will discuss the general spirit of the reform, as well as the modifications brought to general principles of criminal law. The three next publications will focus on the new regime of specific white-collar offences.

The Criminal Code that Belgian criminal courts apply everyday dates back from 1867. In its more than 150 years of existence, the Criminal Code has been amended many times to reflect the shift of social values and to apprehend the repressive needs of the modern society. These multiplied amendments severely undermined its overall readability, which makes the criminal law arsenal very difficult to understand for citizens and corporates.

A recast project has been at the agenda of governments since 2015 and appears to get closer to the finishing line. We offer to guide you through the changes that the draft bill provides for corporates and the individuals who manage them.

Parliamentary process

The project to dust off the more-than-150-year-old Criminal Code dates back to 2015 and has had several twists and turns. Two prominent law professors, D. Vandermeersch and J. Rozie, were at the time asked by the then Minister of Justice Koen Geens to work on a reform of the Criminal Code and the "Criminal Law Reform Commission" (the "Commission") was set up to that end.

In the course of 2016, the Commission published a preliminary draft of a new Book 1 of the Criminal Code. On 20 January 2017, that preliminary draft for the modernization of Book 1 was approved by the Council of Ministers. By mid-2018, the commission had finished Book 2. Approval for the reform of Book 2 followed on 20 July 2018.

The fall of the Michel I government at the end of 2018 prevented a vote in Parliament. The text was then changed here and there (sometimes unexpectedly) and, in 2019, the text was submitted to Parliament, but did not get to a vote. On 24 September 2019, the identical text was again submitted to Parliament but did not get through either. In the next legislature, on 12 February 2020, a new bill was introduced, which was in line with the Commission's vision.

After that, the recast project stopped making progress, partly due to the COVID-19 pandemic. However, the government in place agreed to restart discussions from the initial draft bill prepared by the two eminent law professors. They therefore agreed...