Belgium Faces Collective Complaint Over Digital Divide

Three international NGOs have filed a collective complaint against the Belgian state, arguing that the steady migration of essential public and private services online is locking some of the country’s most vulnerable residents out of basic rights. The complaint was lodged on Monday with the European Committee of Social Rights (ECSR), the Council of Europe body that monitors compliance with the European Social Charter, according to RTBF.

Who Filed and Why

The action was brought by AGE Platform Europe, the European Disability Forum (EDF) and the International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH). It is supported by Unia, Belgium’s independent equality body, and by the interfederal Support Centre for Combating Poverty, and is backed by more than 50 civil-society organisations from across the country, as detailed in a Unia press release.

The complainants argue that Belgium is failing its obligations under the European Social Charter, which it ratified in 2004. Under the Charter, the state must guarantee non-digital access routes to every public service, every essential private service and social services, through the structural maintenance of physical counters, telephone helplines and postal correspondence, so that no procedure is exclusively digital.

“We receive many testimonies about situations where digitalisation still poses real problems. Behind it all, it is access to the right to health, housing, education, employment and mobility that is being called into question. We are talking here about discrimination and unequal treatment,” said Patrick Charlier, director of Unia.

Everyday Barriers

The complaint rests on hundreds of testimonies gathered over several months through roughly 50 associations working with digitally vulnerable groups. According to De Morgen, more than 300 accounts were collected from organisations on both sides of the language border and in Brussels.

The situations cited are mundane yet consequential: buying a train ticket, obtaining information about a bank loan, completing administrative steps at the municipality, booking a medical appointment, or communicating with a child’s school through digital tools. Even ordering a drink can now require scanning a QR code.

Else Tambuyzer of the Flemish Patients’ Platform offered a pointed example. “Services often do offer telephone contact or counters, but you first have to make a digital appointment for them,” she told De Morgen. The complaint also notes that consulting one’s own medical file remains difficult for many, even though this has been a right since 2002.

The groups identified as most at risk include older people, persons with disabilities, people in precarious circumstances, those who are illiterate or have low literacy, and people with little or no command of the national languages. Unia flagged disability, age, health status, wealth, social condition or origin, and language as grounds of concern.

The Government’s Response

Rob Beenders, Belgium’s Minister of Consumer Protection and Equal Opportunities, responded by pointing to existing and planned measures. As 7sur7 reported, the government has extended the universal banking service by five years, now running to 2031. It offers a basic package of non-digital banking services costing no more than 62.50 euros per year, including a debit card, 60 manual transactions, 24 ATM cash withdrawals and statements available at a branch or by post.

“This ensures everyone has access to a bank at a fixed rate and that those who don’t want to bank digitally have an alternative. An offer that is not unimportant in times of phishing,” Beenders said.

The minister also pointed to an action plan to safeguard access to cash. A new law will oblige banks to install a sufficient number of ATMs, and cash withdrawals will become possible in shops. ATMs must be made more accessible to persons with disabilities and older people, with compliance monitored, as l’Avenir reported.

Analysis: A Test of the Digital Transition

The complaint taps into a long-running concern. Figures cited by Unia trace a portrait of widespread vulnerability. The King Baudouin Foundation’s Digital Inclusion Barometer, published by researchers P. Brotcorne and I. Marien in 2020, found that nearly one in two Belgians are at risk of digital exclusion regardless of age or social level, and that one in ten Belgian households has no home internet connection.

A broader coalition, DigitAll, put the figure at around 40 per cent of Belgians at risk of exclusion when it launched a Charter for Digital Inclusion and the DigitAll campaign in June 2022.

What makes the complaint significant is its legal framing. Rather than a single grievance, it argues that digitalisation itself has become a mechanism of discrimination, one that the state has a duty to counter. The ECSR procedure allows certain organisations, including NGOs with consultative status, to bring claims without first exhausting domestic remedies. Decisions are not directly enforceable, but they carry legal and political weight: states found in violation are expected to take structural measures, and rulings can set precedents across Council of Europe member states.

As the non-profit S-Plus, which backs the complaint, put it, the demand is for an always-available non-digital path for public and commercial services, and for policymakers to weigh usability, skills and the cost of hardware and internet access for vulnerable groups.

Els Keytsman-De Ronne, director of Unia, framed the stakes bluntly. While welcoming the gradual introduction of legislation to frame the digital transition, she warned that “in daily life many people are left completely to their fate,” adding that a strict framework and shared standards must be imposed urgently on all public and private actors using digital tools so that progress benefits all citizens without excluding anyone.

What’s Next

The ECSR procedure can take several years. If Belgium is found in violation, authorities will be expected to take structural measures to end the infringement. The preparatory work has been thorough: Unia and the Support Centre spent months assembling the dossier, drawing on the mobilisation of associations nationwide. A conviction is not binding in an enforcement sense, but it would raise pressure through the Council of Europe and could set a precedent for similar cases in Belgium and beyond.

For now, the complaint crystallises a question that increasingly defines modern welfare states: as more of daily life moves online, who is responsible for those who cannot follow, and what does equal access actually require? The answer, the complainants argue, cannot be left to the market alone.