About the national database

Logo of Belgian legislative website

Description

The Moniteur belge website is a public access portal to Belgian legislation online. It gives direct access to the Moniteur belge (the Belgian Official Gazette) itself and to a collection of consolidated legislation and an index. Federal legislation, and that of the (Flemish, French and German-speaking) Communities and the (Walloon, Flemish and Brussels Capital) Regions that make up the federation, is accessible via this site. The site is managed by the Federal Ministry of Justice [Service public fédéral de la justice – SPF Justice].

Belgian legislation can be consulted in the version originally published in the Moniteur belge (Official Gazette) or in the (Consolidated legislation) version consolidated by Justel, a legal information service integrated into the Moniteur belge. Since 2003 the legislation published in the Moniteur belge has been promulgated each day in electronic format only, and the PDF of texts published in the Gazette since then is considered to be the only official version.

  • The Moniteur belge

The Moniteur belge website gives access to the electronic version of the Moniteur belge for the day in question (summaries and full texts) and previous editions dating back to June 1997. The Moniteur is published in Belgium’s three official languages: French and Dutch (in full) and German (in part).

The Moniteur belge is a daily electronic publication comprising a main body, which is paginated by year, and annexes containing acts concerning legal persons (businesses and associations) (published daily) and the annual accounts of businesses (published only on Mondays).

  • Collection of consolidated legislation

This database gives access to up-to-date consolidated versions of all legislation published in the Moniteur belge. Certain texts which were published before 1995 and are still in force may, however, not be reproduced in full.

This collection is made up of two databases (a legislative index and a database of texts in full) that are consulted through a single interface allowing information from both databases to be presented in an integrated way. The amendments made as references in the legislative-index database can thus be consulted within the full version of a text in a table updated every day (D+1). Users can therefore click on the hyperlinks to the Moniteur belge in order to find out about the most recent amendments published in the Gazette the previous day.

Legal acts

The Constitution is the highest point of reference for Belgian domestic legislation. It governs the separation of powers and the way in which powers are exercised. It also sets out society’s fundamental values and citizens’ basic rights.

In a judgment issued on 27 May 1971, the Court of Cassation held that international and supranational instruments take precedence over national instruments, including the Constitution. If an EU Regulation were to conflict with the Constitution, the Regulation would prevail.

Below the Constitution, in descending order, there are:

  • special acts (lois spéciales) – acts passed by special majority which determine the division of powers and the key operational rules of public institutions;
  • acts (lois), decrees (décrets) and ordinances (ordonnances);
  • royal orders (arrêtés royaux) and government orders (arrêtés de gouvernement) which implement acts or decrees; and
  • ministerial orders (arrêtés ministériels).