Is it legal to record a meeting in Belgium?

Until 1 September 2026 this was Code pénal Art. 314bis § 1, 1°: intentionally, by means of any device, intercepting, taking cognisance of or recording "des communications non accessibles au public, auxquelles il ne prend pas part, sans le consentement de tous les participants". In Dutch: "waaraan hij niet deelneemt".

From 1 September 2026 it is Art. 342 of the Code pénal du 29 février 2024, and the participant carve-out survives verbatim: intercepting, taking cognisance of or recording communications not accessible to the public, "auxquelles on ne prend pas part", without the consent of all participants. In Dutch, "waaraan men zelf niet deelneemt". The offence is a peine de niveau 2, which under Art. 36 of the new code is imprisonment of six months to three years or the alternatives, dropping to level 1 with mitigating circumstances.

The substance is unchanged; only the number moved. Anything written before that date cites 314bis, anything after cites 342, and both describe the same rule. § 2's second limb becomes Art. 344.

Two wording corrections for anyone drafting from memory: the carve-out is auxquelles il ne prend pas part, not auxquelles il n'est pas partie; and the object is communications not accessible to the public, not private communications or telecommunications. Both changes came in in 2017.

Yes, unambiguously. The offence reaches only communications the person does not take part in, and that is an express limb rather than an exemption implied from words like "not intended for him". Belgium is the clearest participant-exempt jurisdiction in Europe. No Belgian case law was retrieved, so this is a reading of the text, but the text does not leave much room.

What is restricted is a particular use of the lawful recording. § 2's second limb, now Art. 344, catches whoever "avec une intention frauduleuse ou à dessein de nuire, utilise un enregistrement, légalement effectué", uses a lawfully made recording with fraudulent intent or intent to harm. So the Belgian line is drawn at intent, not at capture and not at disclosure as such. Writing up your own meeting notes is nowhere near it; using the file to set someone up is.

The first limb of § 2 separately catches knowingly holding, revealing or disclosing the content of communications unlawfully intercepted or recorded.

Nothing, by criminal law. Belgium, unlike France and Luxembourg, has no presumption-of-consent provision for open recording, because it does not need one: the participant is simply outside the offence. The transparency duty is GDPR's only.

Quick note before we start: I'm recording this so I can write my notes up afterwards. It transcribes on my laptop, nothing goes to the cloud, and I only keep the text. Say so now if you'd rather I didn't.

On express versus implied consent and on calendar-invite notice, no Belgian authority was found. Longer versions are on telling people you're recording.

GDPR applies as well, and the analysis is the ordinary European one: a meeting recording is personal data about every identifiable speaker, a transcript without speaker labels is still personal data, the household exemption is read narrowly and a work meeting has a direct connection to a professional activity, you need a lawful basis, and Art. 13 wants the information at the time the data are obtained, which for an always-on recorder means before the substance of the meeting. The European framework covers all of that once rather than on every country page.

No collective agreement covers audio, and that was checked exhaustively rather than assumed. All 145 coordinated CNT/NAR collective agreements were downloaded and searched for the French terms for audio, listening, microphone and sound recording, with zero hits. CCT 68 is cameras only: its Art. 2 defines camera surveillance as a system comprising one or more cameras, and the instrument speaks throughout of images. CCT 81 covers data relating to electronic communications transitant par réseau, network traffic data such as email and internet use, not local audio of an in-person meeting.

So the consultation route is the general one. Loi du 20 septembre 1948, Art. 15 a) gives the conseil d'entreprise an opinion right on all measures capable of modifying work organisation, working conditions and the undertaking's output. CCT 9 Art. 10 requires the council to be informed of projects and measures capable of modifying the circumstances and conditions in which work is performed. CCT 39 adds three months' prior information for new technology with important collective consequences. The CPPT is subsidiary rather than parallel: it is subrogated into those rights only in the absence of a works council and a union delegation.

One point worth making plainly. Every Belgian workplace instrument here is addressed to an employer monitoring employees. None is triggered by an individual professional running a tool on their own device. The works council question arises on a company rollout and not before.

The Autorité de protection des données has an on-point page on professional telephone conversations, and what it says sits awkwardly with the criminal code: "Il est en principe interdit d'enregistrer des conversations électroniques, professionnelles ou privées." In principle it is prohibited to record electronic conversations, whether professional or private.

That is a broader statement than Art. 314bis or Art. 342 supports, and we would rather flag the tension than resolve it in our own favour: the criminal code exempts a participant expressly and the regulator's page does not repeat the exemption.

Three decisions were also identified but not read in full: Avis n° 18/2013, treating call recording as staff surveillance with the breach being failure to enter it in the work rules; Décision 57/2023 on access to sound recordings; and a 2022 case closed without action involving video and a microphone at a workplace, where the Chamber applied CCT 68 and did not address the audio half, which is itself the point.

Because the binding layer in Belgium is data protection rather than criminal law, this is where the product's architecture does real work. Transcription runs on your own device, the audio is never written to disk, and nothing is sent anywhere. There is no cloud component, so on our reading we are not a processor under Art. 4(8), which processes personal data on behalf of a controller and presupposes receiving it. That means no Art. 28 data processing agreement to sign with us, no sub-processor list, no international transfer and no transfer impact assessment, because there is no transfer. We found no decision squarely holding that an on-device-only vendor is not a processor, so that is reasoning you can check rather than a settled point.

What it does not do is disclose anything. There is no bot in the participant list and no banner on anyone else's screen, so the transparency obligation rests entirely on you saying something. Earkeep does not make anyone compliant and could not: a tool cannot be compliant, only a processing operation can be lawful.

Where it helps in the room is that stopping is real and checkable. A pause from the live edge releases the microphone and the system audio stream, so your operating system's own recording indicator goes dark in front of the person who asked. A meeting on a connected calendar can be marked never-record. And a stretch of the day, or a saved meeting with its transcript, can be purged from the file on your own disk, with no server copy anywhere to reconcile against.

• Code pénal du 29 février 2024, Art. 342 (in force 1 September 2026), Justel
• Code pénal 1867 (Art. 314bis, repealed 1 September 2026), Justel
• CCT 68 (camera surveillance)
• CCT 81 (electronic communications data)
• APD, conversations téléphoniques professionnelles
• GDPR, EUR-Lex

• European recording laws: the four layers, the controller question, and all 32 countries.
• Telling people you're recording: the scripts, and the three ways to stop.
• Private by design: why the audio never leaves your computer.

This page is legal information, not legal advice. It summarises provisions and guidance rather than replacing them, and we are not lawyers. If the answer matters, ask someone who can be held to their answer.