European Case Law Identifier (ECLI)

Belgium

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Belgium

National ECLI Coordinator

The central services of the Federal Public Service Justice (Link opens in a new window.SPF JusticeLink opens in a new window.info@just.fgov.be) act as national coordinator for Belgium.

Country code

ECLI country code for Belgium: [BE]

Generation of national ECLI

ECLI indexation was activated in October 2017.
Case-law:

  • Court of Cassation,
  • Courts of Appeal,
  • Labour courts (Cour du travail/Aarbeidshof):
  • Courts of first instance
  • Commercial courts,
  • Labour tribunals (Tribunal du travail/Arbeidsrechtbank):

registered in the Link opens in a new window.JUPORTAL public database of Belgian case-law, is also available via the ECLI search engine.

The ECLI number is composed of the following: ECLI:BE:[court code]:[year of the decision]:[serial number]

The ordinal number is in two parts, separated by a point:

  • ‘decision type’ code:

ARR for judgments/rulings,
CONC for Public Ministry findings,
DEC for judicial decisions,
ORD for orders,
AVIS for opinions.

  • A serial number.

Until mid-November 2019, this serial number comprised the decision date format YYYYMMDD (year-month-day) followed by a point and a sequence number.

From mid-November 2019, the serial number of the judgments and findings of the Court of Cassation also contain information on the chamber where the case was heard. The serial number format is YYYYMMDD (year-month-day) followed by a point, the chamber code, another point and a sequence number.

The full ECLI of a conclusion of the Public Prosecutor’s Office of the Court of Cassation for a case in which a judgment was delivered on 6 May 2010 is as follows: ECLI:BE:CASS:2010:CONC.20100506.5

For example, the full ECLI of a judgment of the Court of Cassation of 30 October 2020 is as follows: ECLI: BE: CASS: 2020: ARR.20201030.1N.4

If you are looking for a decision and you already know its ECLI number, you can access the specific page containing details of the decision directly using the following URL: https://juportal.be/content/<numéro ECLI>.

For example, you will find the detailed pages of the ECLI numbers given as an example at the following addresses:

Link opens in a new window.https://juportal.be/content/ECLI:BE:CASS:2010:CONC.20100506.5

Link opens in a new window.https://juportal.be/content/ECLI:BE:CASS:2020:ARR.20201030.1N.4

Court code:

Belgium has a large number of jurisdictional codes. The code list for Belgian courts can be found in the attached table PDF (276 Kb) EN.

Belgium’s judicial landscape was redesigned on 1 April 2014. The attached table shows the names of the courts before and after the reform of 1 April 2014.

Last update: 23/06/2022

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