The statutes of a Belgian company are public. The full consolidated text has been free online for several years, as a searchable PDF, with no login. Yet most guides send you to the Belgian Official Gazette, which is the one place the full statutes are not published.
That distinction is the whole point of this guide. There are three routes, they hand you different documents, and which one works depends on a single question: was the deed passed before a notary?
The short version
What you need | Where |
The full, current consolidated statutes | The notaries' statutes database, free |
The extract of the incorporation deed, and what changed since | Annexes to the Belgian Official Gazette, free |
Anything before 1 May 2019, or a private deed | Registry of the enterprise court |
Route one: the statutes database
This is the least known route and the most rewarding.
Its official name is Statuten en vertegenwoordigingsbevoegdheden, statutes and powers of representation, and it runs at statuten.notaris.be. Legal writing calls it the statutendatabank, and the application itself is named Stapor. Those are three names for one service, not three services.
It has a statutory basis in article 2:7, § 2 of the Belgian Code of Companies and Associations, and is operated by the Royal Federation of Belgian Notaries.
What you get. The full consolidated statutes, as a PDF with a real text layer. Not a scan, not an extract. You can search it and copy from it. We pulled a 23-page document with no account, no captcha and no payment.
How you search. By enterprise number only. There is no name field. If you only have a name, look it up in KBO Public Search first and bring the number with you.
There is a second tab, powers of representation, holding the history of the clauses that determine who may bind the company. That is exactly what you want to know before anyone signs a contract.
The mistake that is almost everywhere
Any number of Belgian accountancy and law-firm pages state that the database only covers legal entities incorporated from 1 May 2019. That is wrong.
The date refers to when the deed was filed, not when the company was founded. Any company that has had a notarial deed about its statutes since 1 May 2019 is in there, however old it is.
We checked. Etablissementen Franz Colruyt, an NV since 9 March 1950, has five versions in the database, the most recent from October 2025. Anheuser-Busch InBev has twenty-five. A company incorporated in 1950 that amended its statutes in 2023 is simply present.
What you will not find is a consolidated version from before 1 May 2019. The database says so itself: for older consolidated statutes you have to go to the registry of the competent enterprise court.
Why a non-profit is often missing
The database holds statutes arising from notarial deeds. That is where the boundary sits.
Article 2:5 of the Code of Companies and Associations sets out which kind of deed each legal form requires:
Legal form | Incorporation deed | In the database? |
BV, CV, NV, European company, SCE | Notarial, mandatory | Yes, after a notarial deed since 1/5/2019 |
International non-profit, foundation, public-interest foundation | Notarial, mandatory | Yes, after a notarial deed since 1/5/2019 |
VOF, CommV, EEIG | Notarial or private, founders' choice | Only if they used a notary |
VZW (non-profit association) | Notarial or private, founders' choice | Only if they used a notary |
This is counter-intuitive. An ordinary non-profit may draw up its statutes privately, in which case nothing reaches the database. An international non-profit or a foundation must use a notary, and so is present. We confirmed the latter on a public-interest foundation.
Article 2:5, § 4 adds that every amendment to the statutes must take the same form as the incorporation deed. A non-profit that started privately therefore usually stays private.
One warning about reading an empty result: the database shows the same message whether the deed was private or the entity simply has not passed a notarial deed since 2019. An empty result does not prove the deed was private.
Route two: the annexes to the Official Gazette
This is where everyone sends you, and it is useful, but you need to know what it does and does not give you.
Search the Bijlage van de Rechtspersonen. You can search by enterprise number, name, postcode, address, publication number, publication date and legal form, plus a dropdown for the subject of the deed. Two subjects matter here: incorporation, and statutes covering translation, coordination and other amendments.
What you get is the extract, not the full statutes. That is not an accident, it is how the law is written. The full, updated and consolidated text of the statutes is indeed filed in the legal person's dossier, but of that document only a notice of its subject is published in the annexes. The extract of the incorporation deed does carry the essentials, including legal form, name, registered office, duration, founders and contributions.
And the PDFs are scans. We downloaded one and inspected its structure: an image file, no fonts, bitonal compression. There is no text layer. You cannot search it or copy from it without running OCR. That is the sharpest practical contrast with the statutes database.
There is also no search of the contents of the deeds. You search the characteristics of the publication, not what it says.
How far back it goes. In practice you get a scanned PDF with publications from 1997 onward. Older entries appear in the index, with name, legal form, address, subject and publication number, but without a document. We inferred that from the complete publication history of a single company, 290 entries, and there is no official statement of a digitisation cut-off to set against it. Treat 1997 as a rule of thumb.
Publication follows within ten days of filing.
Route three: the court registry
For everything the first two routes miss, the registry of the enterprise court still holds the complete dossier. That includes the first version of the statutes together with the incorporation deed, and the updated consolidated text accompanying every amendment.
The law is explicit about the cost: anyone may inspect the filed documents relating to a given legal person free of charge. For a copy you pay registry fees. We were not able to locate the tariff, so we are not quoting a figure.
This is the only route for consolidated statutes from before 1 May 2019, and for legal persons that never went near a notary.
Start with the enterprise number
All three routes work best with an enterprise number, and the statutes database accepts nothing else. KBO Public Search is therefore the first step whenever you start from a name.
A useful detail: the company page in the Crossroads Bank carries an external links block pointing at all three sources, including the statutes database, which the register itself labels as notarial deeds. Follow that link and you skip the confusion in this guide entirely.
What to do with the statutes
The statutes tell you who may sign, what the company was set up to do, and how its board is composed. For a commercial assessment that is half the picture. The other half is in the numbers.
How to read a Belgian company's annual accounts covers where to find the filed figures, and solvency, liquidity and profitability covers which ratios move first when something is going wrong. If matters have gone further than that, how to check whether a Belgian company is bankrupt explains which registers give a definitive answer.
For the full picture of what the Belgian register publishes, start at the Belgian company register, and for the publications themselves at searching the Belgian Official Gazette.
Frequently asked questions
Where do I find the full statutes of a Belgian company?
In the notaries' statutes database at statuten.notaris.be. It provides the full consolidated statutes as a searchable PDF, free and without an account, provided a notarial deed about the statutes has been filed since 1 May 2019.
Are the full statutes in the Belgian Official Gazette?
No. The annexes publish the extract of the incorporation deed, and for the consolidated statutes only a notice of the subject. The full text is filed in the legal person's dossier but is not published in full.
Does the statutes database only cover companies incorporated after 1 May 2019?
No, and this is a widespread misconception. The date refers to the filing of the deed. A company incorporated in 1950 that amended its statutes before a notary after 1 May 2019 is simply in the database.
Why can't I find a non-profit's statutes?
Most likely because the deed was drawn up privately. A Belgian non-profit may adopt its statutes by private deed, in which case nothing reaches the statutes database. Search the annexes to the Official Gazette or go to the court registry instead.
Can I search the statutes database by company name?
No, only by enterprise number. Look the name up in KBO Public Search first and use the number you find there.
What does it cost to obtain statutes?
The statutes database and the annexes to the Official Gazette are both free to consult. At the court registry, inspecting the filed documents is free by law; for a copy you pay registry fees.
