In Belgium, the competences regarding electronic communications in the broad sense are shared between the Federal State and the Communities. The Communities are competent regarding radio-broadcasting and television as “cultural matters”. The Federal State is competent for the other forms of electronic communications.

Given the technological convergence of the electronic communications sector, a cooperation agreement was concluded on 17 November 2006 between the Federal State, the Flemish Community, the French Community and the German-speaking Community to organise the cooperation between these institutions. In certain conditions, decisions can be adopted by the Conference of Regulators of the electronic communications sector (CRC), assembling BIPT, the VRM, the CSA, and the Medienrat.

As the case may be, the decisions of the CRC apply to the entire national territory or to the territory of the French-speaking, Dutch-speaking or German-speaking Regions or to the territory of the bilingual Brussels-Capital Region. An appeal can be lodged before the Brussels Court of Appeal against each of the decisions of the CRC. It means that, in some cases, several appeals can be lodged against several decisions of the CRC on the same matter.

Back to top