Belgium
Sources for Belgium
Every source used for the Belgium pages, what each supports, how it was accessed, and where its scope ends.
Facts on this page were checked against their sources on .
The Belgium pages rest on six sources: the House of Representatives' official English translation of the Constitution, the Court of Cassation's own site, the consolidated Law of 7 December 1998 on the integrated police (from the official Justel database), two European e-Justice Portal pages (the ordinary courts and prosecution, and the specialised courts), and the Council of Europe's prison statistics. Each was read or retrieved and confirmed on 26 July 2026, and independently re-checked in an adversarial verification pass.
The full register, with the precise scope and stated limitations of every source, is published in the repository at docs/research/belgium-source-register.md.
Sources
Sources
The Belgian Constitution (official English translation, coordinated text)
Belgian House of Representatives (de Kamer / la Chambre) · Legislation · 1994 · link verified 2026-07-26
The official English translation of the coordinated Constitution, fetched as the House of Representatives PDF and text-extracted. Verbatim: Art. 1 "Belgium is a federal State composed of Communities and Regions"; Art. 40 "Judiciary power is exercised by the courts. Court decisions are executed in the name of the King"; Art. 142 "There is for all Belgium a Constitutional Court, the composition, competences and functioning of which are established by the law"; Art. 147 "There is a Supreme Court for all Belgium. This Court has no competence over the substance of the case" (the institution named is the Court of Cassation — see be-cassation); Art. 151 §1 "Judges are independent in the exercise of their jurisdictional competences. The public prosecutor is independent in conducting individual investigations and prosecutions, without prejudice to the right of the competent minister to order prosecutions and to enact binding directives of criminal policy". The "for all Belgium" single-body wording of Arts. 142/147/151 establishes that the judiciary, the constitutional court, and prosecution are federal (national) institutions, not Community/Region ones. Authoritative texts are Dutch/French/German; this is the official English reference translation.
About the Court — Court of Cassation of Belgium
Hof van Cassatie / Cour de cassation (Court of Cassation of Belgium) · Court record · link verified 2026-07-26
The Court of Cassation's own official site, read directly. Supports the institution's name (Hof van Cassatie / Cour de cassation), that "there is one Court of Cassation for the whole Belgian territory" (giving effect to Constitution Art. 147), that it "is not a third degree jurisdiction" and "does not judge the dispute for a third time", and that it "analyses the legality of the rulings and does not know of the facts of the case". Resolves the translation point: the official English rendering of Art. 147 says "Supreme Court", but the institution is the Court of Cassation, which reviews legality, not facts.
Belgium — Federal Public Service Justice (ejustice.just.fgov.be / Moniteur belge) · Legislation · 1998-12-07 · link verified 2026-07-26
The official consolidated French text on the Justel database, fetched and text-searched. Verbatim: the title "Loi organisant un service de police intégré, structuré à deux niveaux" (Law organising an integrated police service, structured on two levels), and the operative wording that the police are "structurés à deux niveaux : le niveau fédéral et le niveau local, lesquels assurent ensemble la fonction de police intégrée" (structured on two levels — the federal level and the local level — which together provide the integrated police function). The law also modifies the earlier law on the gendarmerie, confirming that this reform merged the former forces into the integrated service. Establishes the two-level (federal + local) integrated-police structure and its statutory basis; the internal directorates of the Federal Police were NOT verified (its own website was unreachable).
National justice systems — Belgium (European e-Justice Portal)
European Commission (European e-Justice Portal) · International organisation · link verified 2026-07-26
The European Commission's e-Justice portal page on Belgium, read directly. Supports the ordinary-court hierarchy — courts of first instance across 12 judicial districts, five courts of appeal ("Brussels, Liege, Mons, Ghent and Antwerp"), and the Court of Cassation (Cour de cassation / Hof van Cassatie) at the apex; the prosecution as the "State Counsel's Office or Prosecutor's Office (ministère public / openbaar ministerie)", the "standing judges" (magistrature debout / staande magistratuur, the parquet / parket) distinct from the "sitting judges" who adjudicate; and Article 151(1) on the independence of judges. An intergovernmental (EU) source describing Belgium.
National specialised courts — Belgium (European e-Justice Portal)
European Commission (European e-Justice Portal) · International organisation · link verified 2026-07-26
The European Commission's e-Justice portal page on Belgium's specialised courts, read directly. Supports the Constitutional Court — it "examines conformity of acts, decrees and ordinances with the Constitution", "oversees proper division of powers between the federated entities", "may annul and suspend acts, decrees and ordinances", and is "a court consisting of 12 judges" — and the Council of State (Conseil d'État / Raad van State) as the supreme administrative court, "both an advisory and a judicial institution" that annuls administrative acts and acts as a court of cassation for the inferior administrative courts. Establishes that Belgium has, outside the ordinary apex, a separate constitutional-review court and a separate supreme administrative court.
Prison Populations — SPACE I 2024 (Council of Europe Annual Penal Statistics), PC-CP (2024) 5
Council of Europe / University of Lausanne (Marcelo F. Aebi and Edoardo Cocco) · International organisation · 2024-12-15 · link verified 2026-07-25
Strasbourg, 15 December 2024, updated 24 September 2025. An international (Council of Europe) source: data are supplied by national prison administrations to the University of Lausanne research team via a questionnaire agreed by the Council for Penological Co-operation. Reference date for prison population is 31 January 2024; country population figures are as at 1 January 2024. Figures extracted directly from the report PDF. Supports, for GERMANY: Table 3 — total inmates including pre-trial detainees 59,413, rate 71.2 per 100,000, adjusted 55,916 and 67.0; Table 16 — capacity 72,258 and density 82.2 per 100 places. Supports, for IRELAND: Table 3 — total inmates including pre-trial detainees 4,808, prison population rate 90.0 per 100,000, on a country population of 5,343,805; Table 16 — total capacity 4,560 and prison density 105.4 inmates per 100 places (i.e. above capacity at the national level). Supports, for the Northern/Western Europe batch (reference date 31 January 2024; Table 3 total inmates including pre-trial detainees / prison population rate per 100,000; Table 16 total capacity / prison density per 100 places): NETHERLANDS 9,683 / 54.0, capacity 10,344 / density 93.6; BELGIUM 12,041 / 101.8, capacity 10,680 / density 112.7; DENMARK 4,129 / 69.3, capacity 4,397 / density 93.9; NORWAY 3,004 / 54.1, capacity 3,616 / density 83.1; SWEDEN 9,748 / 92.4, capacity 9,295 / density 104.9; FINLAND 3,041 / 54.3, capacity 2,958 / density 102.8. These were extracted directly from the report PDF and cross-checked against the Ireland row already recorded here (column reading validated). The report states its aim is comparable data but warns that 'any comparisons of the levels (in rates, ratios and percentages) shown by the countries according to different indicators are always problematic'. It does NOT support any sub-national figure, nor any cross-country ranking.