What Atlas holds for Belgium
Source: the Atlas database, updated automatically.
The official records
Belgium's statutory backbone is the Crossroads Bank for Enterprises, the KBO in Dutch, the BCE in French, which assigns every company a ten-digit enterprise number (formatted 0XXX.XXX.XXX) that also serves as its VAT identifier once prefixed with BE. The KBO Public Search portal exposes status, registered address, activity (NACE-BEL) codes and, for many entities, directors and filings, while Statbel publishes the macro counts. Because registration is mandatory and updated continuously, the register is the most current map of who is actually trading.
The gap opens once you leave that register. Belgium runs in three languages: Dutch in Flanders, French in Wallonia, German in the east, and the overwhelming majority of its ~1.1 million enterprises are micro-firms that publish only in their local tongue, if at all.
How to use the register
- Start from the register, not from a bought list. It is the legal record of every company.
- Read the status field. Registers keep closed companies too. See how many have closed in other registers.
- Check the website belongs to the company, with the registration number or a distinguishing name on the page.
Sources
Descriptions are based on the national sources above. Figures in the text are rounded and change over time. Found an error? Write to atlasforgex@proton.me. More countries: business data by country and registers by country.