Belgium Media Law Guide

BELGIUM MEDIA LAW GUIDE

Contributor:  Frederic Debusseré (Partner, Timelex)

Last updated: 3 September 2026

This chapter provides an overview of media law in Belgium as it applies to defamation and privacy, covering the constitutional protection of freedom of expression and the pre-emptive, civil and criminal limits on it, including the right of reply, data protection, the right to one’s image and the anti-SLAPP regime.

Freedom of Expression and Its Limits under Belgian Law

The fundamental right to freedom of expression, as protected by Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights and Article 11 of the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union, is embedded in the Belgian Constitution in two separate provisions. First, Article 19 of the Belgian Constitution safeguards the freedom of expressing one’s opinion. Second, Article 25 of the Belgian Constitution explicitly protects the freedom of the written press and prohibits censorship of it. An extra protection to the freedom of expression under Belgian law is the Act of 7 April 2005 on the protection of journalistic sources. In 2006 the Constitutional Court broadened the scope of application of this Act to also include “everyone who delivers a direct contribution to collecting, producing, editing and distributing information to the public via a medium”. Hence, freelancers and regular “bloggers” are also protected under that Act.

Freedom of expression is protected broadly under Belgian law, but there are nevertheless several limitations possible to the exercise of the right. A distinction should be made between, on the one hand, pre-emptive limitations and, on the other hand, repressive measures that follow from criminal and civil law.

A. Pre-emptive Measures

Prohibition on Censorship

Pursuant to Article 25 of the Belgian Constitution, which prohibits censorship, State measures, such as court judgements, that prevent people from exercising their freedom of expression are prohibited.

Injunction to Prevent Publication or Distribution

Pre-emptive injunctions to prevent publication are difficult to obtain in Belgium due to the constitutional prohibition on censorship under Article 25 of the Constitution, which effectively bars courts from imposing prior restraint on the press. While a claimant may in principle initiate interim injunction proceedings (summary proceedings), in which the president of the court can impose temporary measures upon proof of urgency and necessity, any such measure that prevents publication before it has taken place risks being characterised as unconstitutional censorship. Courts must therefore refuse preventive measures where a publication has not yet been released or sufficiently distributed, as established by the majority of case law following a judgment of the Supreme Court in 2000. Only where a publication has already been released or offered for sale and a sufficiently wide distribution has already taken place may an injunction preventing further distribution be considered.

Article 25 of the Constitution refers expressly to the written press, which historically gave rise to uncertainty as to whether the same prohibition on prior restraint applied to audiovisual works. This question was ultimately resolved by the European Court of Human Rights in its judgment in RTBF v. Belgium of 29 March 2011. The Court held that Belgian law lacked a sufficient legal basis and consistent case law to justify imposing a broadcast ban, effectively extending the same level of protection against prior restraint to audiovisual publications as that afforded to the written press.

Notwithstanding the majority of case law, there are exceptions where lower courts allowed censorship without the publication having been distributed. However, such judgements are generally overruled on appeal (if an appeal is lodged).

Other Pre-emptive Measures

Nevertheless, there is case law where other preventative measures, such as an obligatory notice before broadcasting a television programme or an informative banner attached to a written publication, have been obtained through an interim injunction procedure.

B. Repressive Measures

In summary proceedings

When a damaging publication has been released, the claimant could consider initiating summary proceedings to obtain an interim injunction. In such cases, the president of the court can impose temporary measures if the claimant proves that such measures are urgent and necessary to safeguard his or her

rights or interests, such as the right to privacy and reputation. In principle, such procedures are based on a debate between both parties. However, in cases of absolute necessity, for instance if there is no time for the claimant to serve a writ of summons to someone (e.g., instant damage, a defendant domiciled outside Belgium, etc.), a court can give judgement following an ex parte (i.e. unilateral) application of the claimant (which the defendant can appeal afterwards).

Possible measures that can be imposed include the withdrawal of books, magazines, or newspapers, taking content offline, adding a disclaimer (e.g., stating that the content is fictional), etc.

C. UNDER CIVIL LAW

Besides limitations to the freedom of expression in the form of criminal sanctions (see below), there are also boundaries to exercising the right to freedom of expression under civil law. When someone seeks to take action against a damaging publication, in most cases legal action is brought under civil rather than criminal law, given the de facto criminal immunity for press offences.

There are various legal grounds to bring a legal action under civil law:

Right of Reply

First, any natural or legal person who is named or otherwise identifiable in a publication has a statutory right of reply. This allows them to have their own response inserted free of charge. This right is not an exception to press freedom but a complement to it, offering a means of restoring one’s reputation and of correcting or countering published information.

The applicable legislation depends on the medium. For the periodical written press the right is governed by the federal Act of 23 June 1961 on the right of reply. Radio and television fall under a separate audiovisual regime, laid down partly in that federal Act and partly in the media legislation of the Communities.

For the written press the right is broadly conceived. It is enough that the person has been named or is implicitly identifiable in a periodical (such as a newspaper or magazine but not a book). The mention does not need to be incorrect, damaging or defamatory, nor does the person have to show any legitimate interest. A narrower rule applies to replies to scientific, artistic or literary criticism, which are admissible only to set right a factual element or to counter an attack on the person’s honour. The reply must relate directly to the publication concerned, be drafted in the same language, avoid anything insulting or contrary to the law or public morals, and not needlessly implicate third parties. It is also capped in length and may not exceed 1,000 characters or twice the space occupied by the passage that gave rise to it, whichever the claimant prefers. The request must reach the publisher within three months after the publication date. The publisher has to insert the reply in full and unaltered, in the same place and typeface, in the next issue appearing after a period of two days (Sundays and public holidays excluded).

For audiovisual media the right is narrower. It is not enough merely to have been mentioned. The person must have been named or identified and must be seeking to correct an incorrect statement of fact about them or to answer content capable of harming their honour or reputation. The right does not arise where the broadcaster has already made a satisfactory correction. As in the written press, the reply must relate directly to the contested content and be drafted in the same language. It may not exceed three minutes of reading time or 4,500 characters, must be requested within a month, and is then broadcast in full in a later programme of the same kind.

The statutory right of reply extends only to periodical writings and to radio and television services. A purely analogous application to online media is not straightforward, because the way in which the right is exercised depends on the nature of the medium. Even so, a limited number of courts have addressed the question, and some have accepted that a website can, under certain conditions, be brought within the notion of a periodical writing, in particular the online version of a newspaper or magazine article. The case law is not uniform, however, and other courts have refused to extend the right of reply to online communications.

If the publisher or broadcaster refuses to insert the reply, or inserts it incompletely or late, the person concerned can enforce the right before the courts. Enforcement lies with the president of the court of first instance, who sits as in summary proceedings and deals with the matter as a priority. In addition, in the written press, an unjustified refusal to publish a reply is a criminal offence punishable by a fine, and the criminal court will also order the reply to be inserted. Non-publication may equally give rise to civil liability in damages.

Separately, journalistic self-regulation adds a deontological layer. The applicable ethics codes require journalists to correct incorrect factual information, and to allow a reply where relevant, without distinguishing between print, audiovisual and online media, though this is a professional duty rather than a legal obligation.

Fault-based Liability

Second, there are the rules on fault-based liability (Articles 6.5 and 6.6 Civil Code), which can be invoked against the author, publisher, printer or distributor of a certain expression to claim damages.

In this regard, Article 25 of the Constitution provides for a system of layered liability. This entails that, if the author of a publication is known, the publisher, printer and distributor cannot be prosecuted. When the author is not known, the publisher can be prosecuted. If the latter is also unknown, the printer can be prosecuted. If even the latter is unknown, the distributor can be prosecuted. This layered-liability regime certainly applies to publications written on paper, but it is debated whether it also applies to digital and audiovisual formats, such as radio, tv and digital publications.

In legal proceedings, the plaintiff must prove (1) misconduct or negligence, (2) material or moral loss, and (3) a causal link between the misconduct/negligence and the loss.

In order to determine whether there is misconduct or negligence, it is sufficient for a court to find that there is a breach of one of the criminal provisions mentioned below, creating a “quasi-criminal liability”. Furthermore, the misconduct can be determined on the basis of the criterion of the “reasonably cautious journalist”. In various cases sanctions have been imposed as a result of the publication of incautious and incorrect accusations, unnecessarily harmful wording or breaches of the right to privacy.

When adjudicating cases of unlawful exercises of the right to the freedom of expression, courts will inevitably take into account the aforementioned constitutional provisions and the conditions of Article 10 of the European Convention of Human Rights.

Procedurally, the unlawfulness of a publication can be established in civil law courts, which can subsequently impose an order to pay damages and/or a cease-and-desist order on the author.

When provisional measures are required, the claimant can request the court that will rule on the merits to give an interim judgment that imposes provisional measures, such as an obligatory information notice or a ban to spread the publication any further. Another possibility is initiating interim injunction proceedings, requesting the president of the court to impose interim measures. In such proceedings, the claimant has to show urgency (Article 584 Code of Civil Procedure) and the president cannot rule on the merits of the case (Article 1039 Code of Civil Procedure).

The statute of limitations of civil claims for damages is 5 years after the acknowledgement of the loss and the identity of the person or organisation causing the loss, and in any case 20 years after the event giving rise to the damage (Article 2262bis old Civil Code).

Right to Privacy and Data Protection

Third, exercising the freedom of expression is limited by data protection law, a breach of which can give rise to cease-and-desist proceedings (Article 209 Belgian GDPR Implementation Act). The president of the court of first instance can establish the breach of the rights of a data subject and can order the cessation thereof. However, this procedure is limited to establishing a breach and ordering a cease-and-desist. In urgent cases, the data subject can initiate summary proceedings to request the interim measures. Damages have to be claimed through the regular proceedings on the basis of fault-based liability.

Besides these court proceedings, the data subject can file a complaint against the data controller with the Belgian Data Protection Authority. The authority can then, amongst other measures, issue a warning to the controller, order the controller to comply, or impose a fine on the controller.

The statute of limitations for bringing claims for violations of privacy and data protection law is ten years (Article 2262bis old Civil Code).

Right to Image

Fourth, as a result of the right to image, publishing pictures depicting a person’s image is only allowed when that person has consented to the publication (Article XI.174 Code of Economic Law). When a picture is taken of a public figure, such as a politician, a musician or an athlete, while conducting his public role, consent to publish these pictures is presumed to be tacitly given. When a picture is published without consent, the person depicted in that picture can claim damages without having to prove misconduct, loss and a causal link between both. The right to image should be seen separately from the right to data protection, which implies that a journalist who is responsible for publishing the picture cannot invoke the journalistic exceptions to the GDPR.

The statute of limitations for bringing claims based on a violation of the right to image is ten years (Article 2262bis old Civil Code).

Unfair Market Practices

Fifth, there are several unfair market practices that give rise to limiting the exercise of the right to (commercial) freedom of expression. For example, communications that parasite on another company’s reputation, intentionally create confusion with another company’s tradename or products, infringe on their intellectual property rights or reveal another company’s trade secrets can give rise to cease-and-desist orders which could have an adverse effect on the freedom of expression.

From a procedural perspective, cessation of the practices can be requested through cease-and-desist proceedings before the president at the enterprise court (Article VI.104 Code of Economic Law). Cease-and-desist proceedings can only be brought before the court within one year after the unfair market practice has ended (Article XVII.1 Code of Economic Law).

Anti-SLAPP Legislation

Background and Transposition

On 11 April 2024, the European Parliament and Council adopted EU Directive 2024/1069 of 11 April 2024 on protecting persons who engage in public participation from manifestly unfounded claims or abusive court proceedings (‘Strategic lawsuits against public participation’), commonly referred to as the Anti-SLAPP Directive. The Directive provides safeguards against so-called ‘Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation’ (SLAPPs), i.e. legal proceedings initiated not to genuinely vindicate a right but primarily to silence, intimidate, or financially exhaust individuals engaged in public debate, most notably journalists, activists, human rights defenders, and academics.

The Directive does not apply to tax, customs, or administrative matters, nor to criminal proceedings or arbitration.

Belgium transposed this Directive by an Act of 30 May 2026, which predominantly amends the Code of Civil Procedure. The Act inserted a new Chapter XXVII (Articles 1385/1 to 1385/7) and conferred on Belgian courts specific competence to handle SLAPP-related damages claims arising from proceedings conducted in third countries.

Scope and Definitions

Article 1385/1 of the Code of Civil Procedure introduces three key definitions for the purposes of the new chapter:

• ‘Public debate’ is defined as the making of any statement or the carrying out of any activity by a natural or legal person in the exercise of the right to freedom of expression and information, freedom of the arts and sciences, or freedom of assembly and association, and any preparatory, supporting or assisting action directly linked thereto, and which concerns a matter of public interest.
• A ‘matter of public interest’ is any matter which affects the public to such an extent that the public may legitimately take an interest in it.
• ‘Abusive court proceedings against public debate’ is defined as court proceedings which are not brought to genuinely assert or exercise a right, but have as their main purpose the prevention, restriction or penalisation of public debate, and in which wholly or partially unfounded claims are brought.

Procedural Mechanisms

To give effect to the Directive’s protective framework, the Belgian legislature inserted a number of procedural mechanisms into the Code of Civil Procedure.

First, Article 1385/3 Code of Civil Procedure allows the court to order the claimant, at the court’s own initiative or at the defendant’s request, to provide a financial security intended to cover any damages the defendant may sustain as a result of the proceedings. The security must be calibrated so as not to unduly impair the claimant’s right of access to justice, and its amount or form may be revised in the course of the proceedings.

Second, and most significantly, Article 1385/4 Code of Civil Procedure introduces an early dismissal procedure for manifestly unfounded claims. Any natural or legal person targeted by proceedings on account of their participation in public debate may request the early dismissal of those proceedings at any stage. Importantly, the burden of proof is reversed: it is the claimant who must substantiate that the claim is not manifestly unfounded. The request for early dismissal is treated with absolute priority and must be heard on an expedited schedule, with procedural time limits set by the court not exceeding thirty days each. A decision to grant early dismissal is itself appealable, but a refusal to dismiss is not. Article 1385/4(5) Code of Civil Procedure further specifies that the early dismissal of a manifestly unfounded claim does not prevent the court from additionally qualifying the proceedings as abusive of proceedings against public debate under Article 1385/5 Code of Civil Procedure.

Third, Article 1385/5 Code of Civil Procedure provides a non-exhaustive list of factors the court may take into account when assessing whether proceedings constitute abusive proceedings against public debate.

Some of these factors mentioned in Article 1385/5 are also mentioned in Article 4.3 of the Directive:

• The disproportionate, excessive or unreasonable nature of the claim or part thereof, including the excessive dispute value;
• The existence of multiple proceedings initiated by the claimant or associated parties in relation to similar matters;
• Intimidation, harassment or threats on the part of the claimant or the claimant’s representatives, before or during the proceedings, as well as similar conduct by the claimant in similar or concurrent cases;
• The use in bad faith of procedural tactics, such as delaying proceedings or the discontinuation of cases at a later stage of the proceedings in bad faith.

The Belgian transposition adds the following factors:

• Abuse of imbalance of power, such as a financial advantage or political or social influence, to exert pressure on the defendant;
• The lawsuit is deliberately directed against individuals rather than against the organisations responsible for the disputed act.

Fourth, Article 1385/6 Code of Civil Procedure introduces a dedicated action to obtain damages before Belgian courts for natural and legal persons domiciled or established in Belgium who have been the target of abusive proceedings in a non-EU country. Where the foreign proceedings are still pending, the Belgian court has to stay its ruling on the damages claim until those proceedings are concluded.

Fifth, the financial consequences of abusive litigation are enhanced. When proceedings are found to constitute abusive court proceedings against public debate, the court may impose a procedural fine of up to 25,000 EUR. In addition, when proceedings are found to be used for manifestly dilatory or abusive purposes, the court must increase the statutory lump-sum compensation for attorney fees of the defendant in order to cover the latter’s full attorneys fees, even if these exceed the normal statutory maximum amount, unless they are excessive.

Article 1385/2 Code of Civil Procedure introduces an amicus curiae-type of mechanism, allowing legal entities whose statutory purpose is the protection of human rights or fundamental freedoms to file written observations to assist the court in assessing the manifestly unfounded or abusive character of the proceedings, subject to judicial authorisation and provided they are not a party to the dispute.

D. Under Criminal Law

In Belgium, there are several forms of expression which are deemed non-acceptable in society and therefore punishable under criminal law:

Defamation

An expression qualifies as defamation when:

• It accuses someone of a fact;
• It is made with malicious intent;
• With the result that that person’s honour is offended, or that he or she is exposed to public contempt; and

There is no defamation if the person accused of defamation makes it credible by any means that the alleged fact is plausible. However, this is not possible when the allegation of a specific fact has been made with the intent to cause harm without any reason of public or private interest.

Prosecutions for defamation can be started only upon a complaint filed by the victim of the offence, or, when the victim has died, his or her spouse, children or legal successor to the third degree. The person being prosecuted for defamation cannot argue as a defence that the expressions are a mere reproduction of already existing publications.

Making defamatory statements public or even distributing them amongst several persons can be punished with a fine of 200 up to 20,000 EUR (Article 240 of the Criminal Code).

Other Crimes Relating to Opinions

Other examples of criminalised expressions are set out in the Criminal Code (a new Criminal Code entered into force on 1 September 2026) and include:

• Provoking or inciting to the commission of crimes (Article 19);
• Non-consensual dissemination of sexually suggestive content, i.e. the intentional display, making accessible, or dissemination of visual or audio content of a naked person or a person performing an explicit sexual act without that person’s consent or knowledge, even if that person consented to its creation (Articles 136-137);
• Insult (Article 244);
• Incitement to discrimination or racial hatred (Article 250);
• The public dissemination of ideas based on racial hatred or racial superiority (Article 251);
• Participation in a group that publicly advocates discrimination or segregation (Article 252);
• The denial, gross minimisation, attempt to justify, or public approval of the genocide committed by the German National Socialist regime during the Second World War (Article 256);
• Sexism, i.e. the public adoption of any gesture or act that is clearly intended to express contempt towards a person on account of their sex, or, for the same reason, to regard them as inferior or to reduce them to their sexual dimension, and which results in a serious infringement of the dignity of that person (Article 257).

Furthermore, some expressions are qualified as criminal offences through special laws, such as:

• the Act of 30 July 1981 on the punishment of certain acts motivated by racism or xenophobia. Breaches of this Act are punishable with criminal fines and imprisonment;
• the Act of 23 March 1995 punishing the denial, minimisation, justification or approval of the genocide committed by the German National Socialist regime during the Second World War. Breaches of this Act are punishable with criminal fines and imprisonment;
• the Act of 22 May 2014 on combating sexism in the public space. This Act criminalises any public gesture or action which is based on a person’s gender and which is clearly intended to express contempt for a person, to regard him or her as inferior or to reduce him or her to his or her sexual dimension, when such an act results in a serious impairment of the dignity of that person. Consequently, sexist expressions on television or on the internet are punishable with fines and imprisonment.

Right to Privacy and Data Protection

Additionally, some breaches to the right to privacy are criminalised under Belgian law. For example, processing personal data without a legal basis set out in Article 6 GDPR, and a processing which, as a result of a grave omission or malicious intent, does not respect the core principles of processing personal data set out in Article 5 GDPR, are punishable with fines of up to 150,000 EUR (Articles 222 ff. Belgian GDPR implementation Act).

It must be stressed, however, that Belgium, acting on the possibility under Article 85 GDPR to provide exemptions or derogations for processing carried out for journalistic purposes, almost completely exempted the applicability of the GDPR to processing personal data for journalistic purposes. As a result, the provisions on (children’s) consent, special categories of personal data and personal data on criminal convictions and offences do not apply (Article 24 Belgian GDPR Implementation Act).

Criminal Procedures

Procedurally, the nature of the expression will determine which criminal court is competent for adjudicating the crime.

When an offence is a so-called “press offence”, the author will be prosecuted before a jury at the Court of Assizes. The elements that need to be present in order for an offence to qualify as a press offence are an (1) unlawful (2) opinion, (3) made public by means of (4) the written press.

However, racism, xenophobia, publishing and printing offences, and all other unlawful expressions that do not fall under the limited definition of a press offence, such as pictures, drawings, oral (e.g. during a press conference) expressions, expressions via audiovisual media (e.g. radio and tv), and digital content on YouTube, TikTok, etc. fall outside the scope of a jury trial and are thus prosecuted before the Correctional Court.

It should be noted, however, that, due to the burdensome nature of a jury trial, there has barely been any prosecution of a press offence by a jury at the Court of Assizes since the Second World War. This thus leads to a de facto criminal immunity for press offences falling under the definition.

Layered Liability

For prosecutions under criminal law, the rule of layered liability described above also applies.

Civil Complaint and Damages

The victim of one of the aforementioned criminal offences can file a complaint with the police, following which the public prosecutor decides to prosecute or dismiss the case. Another possibility is filing a civil complaint with the investigating judge, i.e. a magistrate who performs a pre-trial investigation of the alleged offence. Upon receipt of a civil complaint, the investigating judge is obliged to carry out a judicial investigation and, once completed, to send it to the Council Chamber. The latter is a pre-trial court that decides to refer the case to the competent criminal court or to dismiss the case. Once an offence is already being prosecuted, a victim can still file an action for damages before the criminal court, which will then decide both on the criminal and civil aspects of the case. After a criminal court has already given judgement on the criminal aspects of a case, a victim who is not involved in the legal proceedings is still able to claim damages before that same court.

Contributor: Frederic Debusseré (Partner)

Timelex

Joseph Stevensstraat 7 rue Joseph Stevens

1000 Brussels

Belgium

www.timelex.eu

The material in this Guide is for general information only and does not constitute legal advice.