Belgium

The most significant development in this module is a correction to Belgium's licensing-continuity narrative. The record previously stated that Belgium applied the maximum 18-month MiCA Article 143(3) grandfathering period, permitting providers already operating under prior Belgian law to continue offering services until 1 July 2026 or until MiCA authorisation was granted or refused, whichever came first. That statement has been corrected: ESMA's own official Article 143(3) list records Belgium's grandfathering status as "TBA," not as an affirmatively elected 18-month window, and FSMA's own crypto-asset-service-provider guidance confirms that zero registrations were ever granted under Belgium's prior national VASP regime -- the Royal Decree of 8 February 2022 -- before that regime's rules expired. With no incumbent Belgian providers registered under the prior regime, there was no cohort of firms for a transitional continuation to apply to; the grandfathering provision was moot in Belgium's case rather than actively used. A related overstatement in ESMA's EU-wide statement on the close of transitional periods -- which had implied a "remaining Belgian grandfathered entities" population -- has been corrected on the same basis, since that population never existed. ESMA has confirmed that the MiCA transitional period ended EU-wide on 1 July 2026, after which unauthorised providers generally are expected to wind down EU client-facing activity in an orderly manner; for Belgium specifically, this expectation applies to any provider operating without MiCA authorisation going forward, not to a residual grandfathered incumbent class.

Separately, Belgium's now-superseded pre-MiCA framework required new market entrants to register with FSMA from 1 May 2022, existing providers to notify FSMA of their activity before 1 July 2022, and existing providers to submit a full registration application before 1 September 2022 -- dates that had previously been misstated (an incorrect 1 June 2022 notification deadline) and have now been corrected against FSMA's own regulatory-framework publication. MiCA also carries a small-offer notification obligation: any public offer of a crypto-asset other than an asset-referenced or e-money token that exceeds EUR 1,000,000 in total consideration over a twelve-month period triggers a notification to the competent authority explaining the claimed small-offer exemption basis.

Outlook

With the EU-wide transitional period now closed and Belgium confirmed to have had no incumbent population under its own prior regime, Belgium's licensing environment has effectively completed its transition to a pure MiCA baseline earlier and more cleanly than initially reported. The corrected finding carries enough materiality that it is currently held pending lawyer review before publication. Future cycles should watch for any second independent primary-source corroboration of FSMA's zero-registrations confirmation, and for enforcement activity against unauthorised providers now that the wind-down expectation is in effect.

These two layers were developed on different timelines and for different purposes, and no confirmed post-2022 FSMA publication has been located that explicitly reconciles FSMA's issuer/no-issuer securities test with MiCA's now-binding categories. That leaves an open question for any token that sits near the boundary -- for instance, a token with an identifiable issuer that might qualify as a security under Belgian law but does not fit MiCA's ART or EMT definitions -- as to which framework, or which combination of the two, governs its treatment in Belgium today.

Outlook

This module's amber status reflects a genuine coexistence-and-reconciliation gap rather than a contested or contradictory position: both frameworks remain individually well-evidenced, but their intersection is unconfirmed. A direct search of FSMA's post-2022 publications for updated guidance addressing this overlap is the clearest next step, and the evidence base here should be treated as provisional until that guidance is located or its absence is more firmly established.

Each of these findings is treated as a genuine regulatory gap rather than a research omission: MiCA's architecture is deliberately activity-agnostic and service-focused, and Belgium has not been found to have layered a supplementary licensing regime on top of it for any of the three activities.

Outlook

This is a structurally thin module by design -- on-chain activity where no regulator has yet spoken is a known under-indexed area across the estate, and Belgium's silence here should not be read as evidence that these activities are informally tolerated or informally restricted, only that they are unaddressed. Belgium-specific supplementary treatment of DeFi lending and borrowing in particular remains unresearched and is flagged for escalation; any future FSMA statement or Belgian legislative proposal addressing disintermediated DeFi, mining, or node operation would materially upgrade this module's evidence base.

Substantively, MiCA requires ART and EMT issuers to publish an authorised crypto-asset white paper and to comply with transparency and disclosure obligations before any public offer or trading-admission event. This white-paper and disclosure regime is binding and currently in force, and it applies uniformly to Belgian-supervised issuers as part of the same EU-wide framework that governs ART/EMT issuance across the bloc.

Outlook

Because this regime is directly applicable EU law with an unambiguous national competent authority already exercising its mandate, this module is expected to remain stable and green absent an EU-level MiCA amendment. The main forward-looking watch item is whether NBB issues any Belgium-specific supervisory guidance or enforcement action against an ART or EMT issuer, which would be the first indicator of how actively the mandate is being exercised in practice.

Layered on top of that national restriction is MiCA's EU-wide consumer package. In December 2024, the European Banking Authority, EIOPA and ESMA issued a joint warning that MiCA's protections apply only to the specific authorised legal entity operating in the EU, not to its affiliated group companies, and that not all crypto-assets are regulated, or equally protected, under MiCA -- a clarification of the limits of MiCA's investor-protection scope rather than an expansion of it. FSMA maintains a published complaints-handling procedure for crypto-asset service provider complaints, as required under MiCA Article 108, giving Belgian consumers a defined escalation channel. And MiCA itself prohibits authorised CASPs from outsourcing or delegating client crypto-asset custody to entities that are not themselves authorised as CASPs, a structural safeguard against custody being pushed outside the regulated perimeter.

Outlook

This module is well-evidenced and stable, combining a corrected but confirmed historical national restriction with an active, binding EU-level protection package and a functioning complaints channel. The clearest forward-looking risk identified in the evidence base is the one the ESAs themselves flagged: consumers may not fully appreciate that MiCA protection is entity-specific and does not extend to an authorised firm's wider corporate group, or to every crypto-asset that firm might touch.

What remains unconfirmed is Belgium's domestic individual income and capital-gains characterisation of crypto-asset disposal gains -- specifically, whether such gains fall under a private-wealth-management exemption, speculative miscellaneous income, or professional trading income, and at what rate any taxable amount is assessed. No primary Belgian source (FPS Finance guidance or Belgian Income Tax Code commentary or case law) confirming this categorisation has been located in this cycle's research.

Outlook

This is the module with the clearest escalation need in the current baseline: VAT and cross-border reporting treatment are settled, but the question most individual Belgian crypto holders would actually ask -- how disposal gains are taxed -- remains open pending a primary-source citation. This gap has been routed to the gaps register for direct FPS Finance or CIR92 research in a subsequent cycle.

What is not yet established is any Belgium-specific layer on top of this EU baseline. Sanctions-nexus screening requirements for cross-border crypto-asset transfers, beyond the general EU restrictive-measures regime, have not been researched in this cycle, and this gap is compounded by the fact that cross-border transfer is a structurally thin module across the wider monitor estate -- a pattern of under-indexing rather than a Belgium-specific finding.

Outlook

The passporting and reverse-solicitation baseline is solid and unlikely to change absent an EU-level MiCA amendment. The open question is whether Belgium layers any sanctions-nexus-specific screening obligation onto CASPs handling cross-border transfers beyond the EU restrictive-measures baseline; this sits at the boundary between crypto's own scope and financial-integrity's subscribed AML/CTF surface, and has been flagged accordingly for that monitor's attention.