Criminal defence lawyers at the Court of First Instance in Antwerp, northern Belgium, have lost the right to file conclusions and supporting documents in criminal cases by email and must lodge them on paper at the registry from today.
The Antwerp bar has warned that material sent electronically from September 1 will not be placed in the criminal file at all. In correctional cases it must be handed in at the registry; before the council chamber, the raadkamer, it must be lodged at the hearing.
Until now the Antwerp court had accepted electronic submissions and printed them so that the official paper file could be compiled. That service ends today because it has become too costly and labour-intensive.
Court president Annelies Laureyssens said half of the court’s limited operating budget is spent on paper.
“We wanted to make it easier for people and also accepted digital documents, which we printed ourselves,” she said. “But it has become too much work and too expensive.”
Belgian law still treats the paper file as the authentic criminal dossier. Most courts already require lawyers to lodge paper copies. Antwerp had been an exception.
In civil, commercial and labour disputes lawyers can file through the secured e-Deposit platform. That route is closed in criminal matters because the law does not yet provide for it.
Laureyssens said conclusions have grown longer and the volume of attachments has increased. Files are often too large for ordinary email, forcing staff to retrieve them via external links, which the court now regards as a security risk.
“We have to reverse that decision and I am not happy about it either,” she said.
The court will continue to scan incoming paper files so that parties can consult them digitally without travelling to the registry. That policy had already reduced physical inspections to almost none.
Faced with a rising workload and a shrinking staff, the court chose to keep scanning rather than print and then scan lawyers’ submissions.
“Our establishment is already insufficient. A lower limit has unfortunately been reached, so we have to make choices and cut tasks,” Laureyssens said.
Lawyers have described the reversal as a step backwards. Criminal defence lawyer Walter Damen said it “puts us 20 years back in time” and “says everything about the functioning of justice at the moment”.
Clients, he argued, will bear extra travel costs, since documents now have to be carried to the courthouse by car or on foot.
“At the moment when people say everything must go via computers and everything must be digitised, we now have to go back to paper,” Damen said.
He suggested the justice system should charge costs per file or raise fines slightly rather than underfund the courts. Persistent underfunding, he added, was eroding the rule of law.
Criminal lawyer Tim Smet said the measure put his staff under extra time pressure. Until now they had been able to file a conclusion until midnight at the touch of a button. Lawyers must now attend the registry between 1.30pm and 4pm.
Antwerp lawyer Davina Simons said the earlier cut-off was a considerable change for firms, and that offices further from the courthouse would feel it most. She said the court and its registry were not to blame.
Flemish Bar Association board member Nicolaas Vinckier, who holds its research portfolio, said: “Digitalisation is a short-term cost and a long-term saving. It is a pity that policy does not seem to realise this when it comes to justice.”
A spokesman for Justice Minister Annelies Verlinden of the Christian Democratic and Flemish party (CD&V) said a legal framework for digital dossiers already exists and that a royal decree would be published this autumn.
“Work has indeed been done on this. We will communicate about it at the appropriate time,” Nick Gyselinck said.
The law of March 27, 2024 on the digitalisation of justice created a statutory basis for a digital procedural file made up of both scanned paper documents and born-digital items, together with a central register of criminal files, held by the federal justice ministry. Implementation has been slow and the authentic file in criminal matters remains paper.
Belgium’s new Criminal Code, replacing the code of 1867, has entered into force on the same date.
Laureyssens emphasised that the court is not abandoning digitalisation. Scanning will continue so that files stay available online. The only change is that the registry will no longer print lawyers’ submissions, she said. She said the decision brought Antwerp into line with the rest of the country while federal authorities complete the delayed shift to fully electronic criminal files.
Belgium faces a grave threat from international drug crime that could destabilise society and transform the country into a “narco-state”, according to warnings from senior judicial figures in Antwerp.https://t.co/St9Euzhb7V
— Brussels Signal (@brusselssignal) March 10, 2026
