Reform Belgian Civil Code

After 218 years, dating back to the Napoleonic era, we are on track to a modernised Belgian Civil Code. The extensive Civil Code reform aims to suit the needs of the modern society by codifying or modernising backbone rules of the laws of property, evidence, obligation and contracts.

In 2015, experts from the academic world were entrusted with the task of revamping the Civil Code around the following main characteristics:

• To produce a new Civil Code that states in clear and simple language the rules governing private relations between citizens
• To modernise legal concepts for the contemporary context and to get rid of outdated concepts
• To produce a new Civil Code integrating all the dispersed laws and codifying the court-created civil rules, making the legal concepts more accessible, transparent and foreseeable.

The result is a new Civil Code. The current status is the following: