The legal pages a Belgian website must have

This is the part of a project nobody wants to discuss, and usually the part discovered too late. A Belgian business website has to display certain information. The absence of these pages is invisible — until the day someone goes looking for them.

Here is what you need, in order of urgency.

The legal notice

This is your site's identity page. Belgian economic law requires anyone trading online to be identifiable. In practice, a visitor should be able to tell who is behind the site without having to investigate.

It contains:

• the name or company name, and the legal form
• the address of the registered office
• the company number (BCE) and the VAT number where applicable
• an email address and, ideally, a phone number
• who hosts the site

The point that surprises people most: an activity carried out without a company still has to identify itself. A sole trader, an association, or an activity invoiced through a shared company such as Smart: in every case, the entity that issues the invoice must appear.

It's the cheapest page to produce and the most visible one in an inspection. There's no reason for it to be missing.

The privacy policy

As soon as a site collects personal data, the GDPR applies. And "collecting data" covers far more than people assume: a contact form, a newsletter, an analytics tool, even an IP address written to a server log.

The page has to state, in plain language:

• what data is collected, and how
• what it is used for
• how long it is kept
• who it is shared with, if anyone
• how to exercise your rights: access, correction, deletion, objection

The classic trap is the policy copied from another site. It then describes processing you don't do, and stays silent about the processing you do. That protects nobody.

The terms of sale

They are only mandatory if you sell — goods or services — but the moment you do, they stop being optional.

For sales to consumers, European law provides among other things a fourteen-day right of withdrawal. If your site doesn't mention it, that period can be extended considerably. It's the textbook omission that costs nothing on launch day and a great deal on the day of a dispute.

Terms usually cover ordering, prices, payment, delivery times, warranty, intellectual property, liability and applicable law.

The cookie banner

It's the worst-handled of the four, because it gets treated as a design formality when it is a question of consent.

The rule is easy to state: nothing beyond what is strictly necessary for the site to work may be set before the visitor agrees. Google Analytics is not necessary for a website to work. So it must not load until someone has clicked.

A banner saying "by continuing to browse, you accept" that has already loaded its analytics is not collecting consent — it is announcing it. A valid banner makes refusing as easy as accepting, and it remembers the choice.

Where to start

If your site has none of these, the order in this article is the most useful one: the legal notice first, because it takes an hour; the privacy policy next, because it concerns everyone; the terms of sale if you sell; the cookie banner if you measure your audience.

You're welcome to look at ours, linked from the bottom of every page: legal notice, privacy policy and terms of sale.

And if you're starting from scratch, these pages are part of what we deliver with a site: see website design.

One last caveat, worth what it's worth: this article describes common practice, it does not replace legal advice. For a regulated activity or an online store with particular stakes, have your terms reviewed by someone who does that for a living.