Belgium takes its first transposition step, and it is the smallest one in the Directive

Belgium is the second Member State to do anything we can verify on Directive (EU) 2025/25. On 3 July 2026 the federal Council of Ministers approved a preliminary draft law transposing one point of it: Article 2, point (5), the preventive-control rule [Belgian Council of Ministers decision of 3 July 2026Implementation note]. Nothing in the draft touches the EU Company Certificate or the digital EU power of attorney. The draft goes to the Council of State for an opinion and then to Parliament. Belgium has still communicated no measure on the EUR-Lex transposition record [EUR-Lex transposition notifications for Dir. 2025/25Official data].

What was approved

The announcement is on news.belgium.be, published by the Chancellery of the Prime Minister, dated 3 July 2026 at 18:09, in Dutch and French. The draft transposes two directives at once: Directive (EU) 2024/2810 on multiple-vote share structures, and Article 2, point (5) of Directive (EU) 2025/25, which the announcement describes as the prior control of the instrument of constitution and of amendments to the articles of association [Belgian Council of Ministers decision of 3 July 2026Implementation note].

That description is accurate. Article 2, point (5) replaces Article 10 of Directive (EU) 2017/1132. The new Article 10 requires preventive administrative, judicial or notarial control, or a combination, of the instrument of constitution and statutes of companies in Annexes II and IIB, at formation and on any amendment [Directive (EU) 2025/25, Art. 2(5), inserting Art. 10(1)]. Annex IIB is the partnership annex, and the Belgian forms in it are the vennootschap onder firma / société en nom collectif and the commanditaire vennootschap / société en commandite. Those are the two the announcement names.

The effect in Belgium is easy to state. A company needing an authentic deed already passes a notary. A VOF/SNC or CommV/SComm can be formed by private deed with no prior check at all. The draft ends that.

What was not approved

Everything else. The announcement mentions no EU Company Certificate, no digital EU power of attorney, no once-only principle, no register interconnection [Belgian Council of Ministers decision of 3 July 2026Implementation note]. Those sit in Articles 16b to 16g and will need their own legislation, on the same 31 July 2027 deadline [Directive (EU) 2025/25, Art. 4(1)].

There is a reason a government would start here. Preventive control is the one obligation in the Directive that a Member State can transpose using institutions it already has. Notaries exist, court registries exist, the rule can be written into the Companies and Associations Code. Articles 16b and 16c cannot be transposed the same way, because the certificate and the power of attorney both depend on multilingual standard templates that the Commission has to adopt as implementing acts under Article 24(2) [Directive (EU) 2025/25, Art. 24(2)(d)–(e)]. Those templates were due on 31 July 2026 and are still not in the Official Journal, which we re-check on every working day. No Member State can finish the interesting half of this Directive until they land.

What it changes on this site

Belgium's row on the transposition table now reads "one step taken", not Unknown. It does not read "notified" and it does not read "verified", and those words are doing work:

A preliminary draft binds nobody. The text of the draft has not been published, the Council of State has not given its opinion, and the announcement does not say which authority will run the control, what has to be filed, or what it will cost. The Belgium page says what is known and stops there.

What we are watching next

The Council of State opinion, then the bill reaching the Chamber, then publication in the Belgisch Staatsblad / Moniteur belge. Belgium notifying the measure to the Commission would show up on the EUR-Lex record, which we check daily. Only a gazette read moves the row to verified.