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Belgium has joined the Hague Convention Abolishing the Requirement of Legalization for Foreign Public Documents in the year 1973. Therefore no diplomatic authentication or legalization of documents from Belgium is required for the legal communication with another member state of the convention. The documents only need to be stamped with an "apostille" by the issuing state's authorities in order to be valid in the state of destination.
Apostille certified documents must be issued in Belgium in French, Dutch, German, English, Spanish, Italian or Portuguese. If the document is written in another language, it must be accompanied by a translation into one of the official languages of Belgium, drawn up by a court interpreter, and the signature of the translator must be certified by the chairman of the court. In this case, the translation and the document itself will be apostilled separately.
An apostille in Belgium is a stamp of rectangular shape in Dutch, French or German, containing the mandatory title “Apostille” and a link to the Hague Convention of 1961 in French (Convention de La Haye du 5 Octobre 1961).
In Belgium, at the moment it is possible to certify documents exclusively with an electronic apostille without affixing a stamp. The authenticity of the apostille, in this case, can be checked on a special Internet resource.
Responsible for issuing the apostille is the Legalization Division of the Federal Public Service Foreign Affairs.
The following documents can be authenticated by apostille:
- Certificates of civil status (certificates of birth, death, marriage and divorce)
- Education documents (school reports, certificates, diplomas)
- Extracts from the commercial register
- Judicial decisions
- Notarially certified copies of documents
- Notarially certified translations
- Further notarial documents (authorizations, last will, declarations)
- Commercial documents legalized by a state organ of registration (articles of incorporation, registration certificates, tax registrations etc.)
Requirements for the documents:
An apostille can be issued exclusively on an original document. Therefore, the latter must be in an apparent good condition, all stamps and signatures have to be clear and readable. Furthermore, it must not contain alien marking and labels.
Additional services
In addition to the legalization of your documents, we can provide you with high-quality translations.
If you want to bring company information before the court, it needs to be legalised as well. We are therefore offering extracts from the commercial register of Belgium including apostille and translation.
Belgium Apostille Service -Original Documents Express Service 7-10 Business Days
Express Service 7-10 Business Days