Belgium
EU-level rules also apply — The EU AI Act applies directly, including Annex III point 8(a) for judicial-support AI. Belgium's designation of national competent authorities and market-surveillance authorities was not verified against an official instrument in this pass.
Regulation Tracker · Country · Europe
Belgium
Substantialcivil lawupdated 2026-09-04verified 2026-09-04
EU-level rules also apply — see the European Union record →
As of 4 September 2026 Belgium's only legal-AI instrument is the joint OVB and Avocats.be guidelines for lawyers on the use of artificial intelligence, dated 1 February 2025. They are deliberately permissive: cited sources must be verified, professional secrecy must never enter a tool, and there is expressly no duty to tell the client.
As of 2026-09-04, Belgium has 2 binding rules, official guidance in 8 categories, 0 proposals and 0 positions set only by case law across the 20 categories in the map. Binding rules cover horizontal AI statute, mandatory AI training. In 7 categories we found nothing; in 3 the position is not yet determined.
How to read this page
- Binding rule Binding rule means a rule in force from a court, statute, regulator or equivalent authority.
- Official guidance Official guidance means an official non-binding position from a judiciary, regulator, bar or public body.
- Proposed / consultation Proposed / consultation means a public bill, draft rule or consultation that is not yet in force.
- Set by case law Set by case law means no rule was found, but courts have set the position in decisions.
- Nothing found Nothing found means the category was checked and no rule, guidance, proposal or case-law position was found.
- Not yet determined Not yet determined means research did not establish a reliable position yet.
The rules, category by category
Article 4 of the EU AI Act binds law firms as deployers from 2 Feb 2025. No Belgian mandatory AI CLE; the OVB runs voluntary AI seminars for the profession.
OVB/Avocats.be guidelines: 'De advocaat controleert het resultaat, met inbegrip van vermelde bronnen' — the lawyer must verify that the legislation, doctrine and case law cited in the output actually exist, and must remain critical of the reasoning even where each step cannot be traced to a source.
OVB/Avocats.be: the lawyer 'voert nooit stukken of informatie die gedekt zijn door het beroepsgeheim' into an AI tool, the only exception being absolute certainty that the tool runs in a closed environment with sufficient safeguards (e.g. inside the firm perimeter with no outward data sharing). Personal data must be pseudonymised and kept out of prompts.
OVB/Avocats.be §1.1: 'De advocaat kent de basis van artificiële intelligentie en Large Language Models', and must respect art. 455 Ger.W. and art. 1 of the Codex Deontologie voor Advocaten (art. 1.2 in the French Codex) — behoorlijke beroepsuitoefening, expertise, professional secrecy, independence, avoidance of conflicts, dignity, integrity and discretion.
No dedicated supervision rule. The guidelines state the lawyer 'blijft steeds eindverantwoordelijke voor de output van de AI die hij gebruikt' and that all liability principles continue to apply.
Belgium takes the opposite line to the Netherlands: 'De advocaat is niet verplicht over zijn gebruik van AI te communiceren' — no more than for any other IT application. Consent is required only where processing personal data of a data subject is essential and consent is the applicable legal basis. Chatbot users must be told they are dealing with an automated AI system.
'Richtlijnen voor advocaten voor het gebruik van Artificiële Intelligentie' / 'Lignes directrices à l'intention des avocat(e)s sur l'utilisation de l'intelligence artificielle', dated 1 February 2025 (announced 31 Jan 2025), issued jointly by the OVB and Avocats.be through their digitalisation and deontology commissions. Six pages, bilingual, adding no new deontological duties but applying existing ones.
The Belgian DPA publishes information brochures on AI systems and the GDPR and on the impact of AI on privacy, and points to EDPB Opinion 28/2024 on AI models and EDPB Guidelines 03/2026 on web scraping for generative AI. Nothing specific to legal services.
OVB/Avocats.be §1.1: before use, the lawyer must read the tool's terms, with attention to conditions on training, transfer and storage of data, further processing by the platform, localisation of processing, the open or closed character of the system, the platform's liability terms, and IP and licence conditions.
No Belgian court rule or practice direction requires parties or counsel to disclose or certify AI use in filings as of 4 September 2026.
No Belgian rule barring AI from adjudicative reasoning found as of 4 September 2026; the EU AI Act (Annex III point 8(a), recital 61) and art. 22 GDPR are the operative constraints.
No court guidance for self-represented litigants using AI found as of 4 September 2026.
No evidence rule or guidance on AI-generated or deepfake material found as of 4 September 2026.
The OVB/OBFG guidelines do not address fees; no other Belgian rule or opinion on billing for AI-assisted work found as of 4 September 2026.
No Belgian ruling or regulation on AI legal products offered to the public found as of 4 September 2026. The guidelines permit lawyers to develop their own chatbots provided users are told the system is automated.
No reported Belgian court or disciplinary decision on hallucinated AI citations found as of 4 September 2026.
Not fully checked — no guidance from the College van de hoven en rechtbanken, the Hoge Raad voor de Justitie or the Institute for Judicial Training was located before the search budget was exhausted. CEPEJ(2025)18Final applies as Council of Europe soft law.
Not researched — no published Belgian policy on institutional court AI deployment identified before the search budget was exhausted.
Not researched — no CEPANI (Belgian Centre for Arbitration and Mediation) AI rule identified before the search budget was exhausted.
Official documents recorded for Belgium (1)
- Richtlijnen voor advocaten voor het gebruik van Artificiële Intelligentie (OVB/Avocats.be guidelines on AI for lawyers)
OVB / Avocats.be · revised 2025-02-01 · verified 2026-09-04
Court incidents on the record in Belgium
- Yichang District Court (Hubei)2026-07-21 Warning
Cite this page
SafeLegalAI Legal AI Regulation Tracker, "Belgium" (updated 2026-09-04, verified 2026-09-04), https://safelegalai.com/regulation/country/be (accessed 2026-09-04). Data: CC BY 4.0.
SafeLegalAI is a research publication by Cognesio LLP, not a law firm. Nothing here is legal advice, and no lawyer–client relationship arises from reading it. Rules change; always check the official document linked on each record and take advice on your own situation. Researched and drafted with AI assistance; verified against primary sources and edited by Cognesio LLP. The linked official documents are the record — our summaries are not the law and are not legal advice.