On 30 April 2019, the Belgian Official Gazette published the new Royal Decree of 29 April 2019 implementing the Companies and Associations Code (CAC). Among the many changes introduced are the updated publication forms intended for the publications in the Annexes to the Belgian Official Gazette.
Unlike before, there is now a single, standard form I and II for all depositions filed by legal persons (i.e. companies, associations and foundations). The new forms are easy to download from the de FPS Justice website in either Word, OpenOffice or PDF format.
When using these new publication forms, a distinction is drawn between ‘existing’ legal persons, established on 30 April 2019 at the latest, and legal persons established from 1 May 2019 (under the new company law). It follows then, that legal persons established from 1 May 2019 may use only the new forms.
In principle, existing legal persons may continue to use the old forms until 31 December 2019 inclusive. In any event, only the new forms will be accepted from 1 January 2020.
As you may already be aware, existing legal persons may choose to switch to the new company and association law (the ‘opt-in‘) early, in 2019. It remains to be seen, however, how the registrars of the various Business Courts will approach this in practice. It is already apparent from contact with the Legal Persons Department at the Business Court in Antwerp that existing legal persons going ahead with an ‘opt-in’ in 2019 will only be permitted to use the new forms from that point. Other registrars may maintain a different policy here.
