Brussels, 28 September, (Brussels Morning Newspaper) – Belgium is facing a digital exclusion complaint before the European Committee of Social Rights, with rights organisations arguing that the country’s growing reliance on digital systems is creating barriers to healthcare, banking, transport and public administration for people unable to use online services effectively.
The complaint was lodged by AGE Platform Europe, the European Disability Forum and the International Federation for Human Rights, with support from Belgium’s equality body Unia and the Support Centre for Combating Poverty, Precarity and Social Exclusion.
Complaint Focuses on Access to Essential Services
The case challenges situations in which essential services increasingly require websites, applications, digital identification or online appointments.
According to Unia, more than 300 testimonies concerning structural digital exclusion were collected during 2025 from citizens, associations and public social welfare centres. The evidence includes difficulties involving healthcare, banking, public transport and government procedures.
The organisations behind the complaint argue that Belgium must ensure effective alternatives, including telephone services, physical counters and postal communication.
The European Committee of Social Rights, part of the Council of Europe system, assesses whether countries are complying with the European Social Charter.
Patients Report Barriers to Non-Digital Access
Healthcare access is among the issues raised by campaigners.
Else Tambuyzer of the Flemish Patients’ Platform highlighted how an apparently offline service can still depend on digital access.
“Services often do offer telephone contact or in-person counters as an option, but you first have to make a digital appointment,” Tambuyzer said, according to The Brussels Times.
The concern extends beyond people who have no internet connection. Older people, people with disabilities, residents with limited digital skills and those unable to afford appropriate devices can encounter difficulties as services move online.
Unia’s 2025 research into age discrimination also identified digitalisation as an important source of reported unequal treatment. The organisation has argued that technological development should not prevent people from exercising fundamental rights.
Belgian Government Points to Banking Protections
Belgian authorities have introduced measures aimed at keeping some essential services available offline.
Federal Consumer Protection Minister Rob Beenders has pointed to the extension of Belgium’s universal banking service until 2031. The system is intended to preserve access to basic banking services for customers who do not use digital banking.
“We are protecting purchasing power and ensuring that everyone has access to a bank at a fixed rate, and that people who do not wish to bank digitally have an alternative,” Beenders said in comments reported on 28 September.
Federal Digitalisation Minister Vanessa Matz has separately backed the principle that citizens should retain non-digital ways of dealing with federal administrations. The federal government approved the principle of providing a non-digital alternative without additional cost at first reading in October 2025.
Digital Access Remains a Belgian Policy Challenge
Belgium has developed extensive digital public services, but policymakers increasingly face the question of how to modernise administration without excluding residents who cannot use those systems.
The digital exclusion complaint puts that question before a European social-rights body and could clarify how the European Social Charter applies to increasingly digital public and essential services.
European Committee Will Consider Complaint
The European Committee of Social Rights will now handle the case through its collective complaints procedure.
The process will examine whether the issues raised fall within Belgium’s obligations under the European Social Charter. Any eventual decision could increase pressure on authorities to ensure that meaningful offline alternatives remain available as digitalisation continues across public and essential services.
