BelgiumCooperation Agreement on the Coordinated Partial Implementation of the Digital Services Act, Digital Services Coordinator and Competent Authorities
Accord de coopération du 13 février 2024, arts. 1-11 and 20
In force since .
A transparency and process rule binding government bodies.
- Obligation class
- Governance
As of .
What it requires
- This agreement binds the federal State, the three Communities and their competent authorities, not providers of intermediary services.
- No duty falls on a provider under it: it designates the BIPT as the single Digital Services Coordinator, which receives user complaints, applications for out-of-court dispute settlement certification and trusted flagger or vetted researcher status, and shares them with the other competent authorities (Articles 4, 5, 10 and 11).
What this law does
Article 4, paragraph 1 of the cooperation agreement between the federal State, the Flemish Community, the French Community and the German-speaking Community designates the Belgian Institute for Postal Services and Telecommunications as coordinator, which Article 1 defines as the Digital Services Coordinator within the meaning of Article 49(2) of Regulation (EU) 2022/2065.
Article 1 defines a competent authority as the authority designated by the federal State or by one of the Communities, the federal one being the authority referred to in Article 14, paragraph 1 of the law of and the three others being those referred to in the audiovisual media decrees of the Flemish, French and German-speaking Communities.
Under Article 4, paragraph 2, the coordinator is responsible for coordination at national level of all questions related to the supervision and enforcement of the Regulation. Article 5 requires the coordinator and the other competent authorities to set up an information-sharing system that each of them can access, in which they mention the files they handle and indicate their status in real time.
Under Articles 10 and 11, the coordinator receives applications for certification as an out-of-court dispute settlement body and for trusted flagger or vetted researcher status, and the complaints referred to in Article 53 of the Regulation, and places them in that system.
Under Article 8, before imposing a sanction, the competent authorities check in the system whether another competent authority has already taken a final decision against the same provider of intermediary services for the same infringement of the Regulation. Article 20 provides that the agreement enters into force ten days after the publication in the Moniteur belge of the last act of assent.
The BIPT states that the agreement designates it as the national coordinator and lays down the tasks of the coordinator and of the other competent authorities, the Medienrat, the CSA and the VRM.