Data-center law in Belgium

National jurisdiction · as of 2026-09-06

Belgium has no federal data-centre-specific siting or permitting statute; a data centre instead falls under whichever of the three regions' general environmental-permitting regimes applies where it is sited (the Flemish omgevingsvergunning, the Walloon permis unique, or the Brussels-Capital permis d'environnement), none of which is described here at the provision level.

The Brussels-Capital Region does impose a data-centre-specific duty: the Brussels Code of Air, Climate and Energy Management (CoBrACE) requires the owner or operator of a data centre sited in the Region with an installed information-technology power demand of at least 500 kW to publish and report its energy consumption and sustainability performance indicators to Bruxelles Environnement every year, by 31 March, implementing Article 12 of the EU Energy Efficiency Directive (2023/1791) and Commission Delegated Regulation (EU) 2024/1364.

Belgium's federal grid-connection framework, administered by the transmission system operator Elia, is not described here at the provision level.

01

Instruments on record

1 instrument on record, grouped by the family of approval each one governs.

Environmental review

What impact review must precede approval, and who leads it?

CoBrACE, obligation annuelle de rapportage des centres de données

In force

Code bruxellois de l'air du climat et de la maîtrise de l'énergie (CoBrACE), obligation de rapportage annuel des centres de données, mettant en oeuvre l'article 12 de la directive (UE) 2023/1791 et le règlement délégué (UE) 2024/1364

Applies to both

The owner and the operator of a data centre situated in the Brussels-Capital Region with an installed information-technology power demand of at least 500 kW must publish and communicate to Bruxelles Environnement, every year by 31 March at the latest, the data useful for reporting required under European or international regulation, including final energy consumption and sustainability performance indicators.

Separately, under Commission Delegated Regulation (EU) 2024/1364, the operator transmits to the European data centre database, through the Policy Reporting Platform, the information and key performance indicators the Regulation lists, covering the calendar year immediately preceding the year of the report; a data centre that has been operating for less than a year reports only for its actual period of activity.

Source: Full text of law

Every entry cites the instrument it describes. None of it is legal advice: verify a citation before relying on it. Full sourcing: read the methodology. The rest of the record: all jurisdictions.