In the East Flemish municipality of Aalter, foreign nationals are having to wait 9 times longer than Belgians for the registration of their official domicile in the municipality. This is a finding of research conducted by VRT’s current affairs flagship Pano and daily De Morgen. While foreigners often wait months before being registered, Belgians manage to get it done swiftly, without any problems. The Home Affairs ministry received 110 complaints in the past year, with an anonymous whistleblower speaking of a ‘campaign of deterrence’ against foreigners.
Municipality of Aalter gets non-Belgians to wait 9 times longer than Belgians for domicile registration
Colin Clapson
Published:
Updated:
A sample of 204 registrations confirms what witnesses told Pano and De Morgen. People with Belgian nationality get registered 9 times faster than non-Belgians. For Belgians, registration takes 15 days on average. For non-Belgians it is 136 days, with peaks exceeding 450 days. That's more than 1 year and 3 months.
Practice is ‘pertinently illegal’
Aalter's refusal to register people in the population register pending a housing check is against the law. Pano and De Morgen spoke to a total of five different experts. They all say the same thing: this is not allowed.
‘This is pertinently illegal,’ responds Joy Verstichele, coordinator of the Vlaams Huurdersplatform, a renters’ organisation. ‘The law is very clear: people’s domicile must be registered, temporarily if need be.’
According to Geert Matthys, migration expert at Artevelde university, the law is clear. ‘If a person is encountered at the location, he or she must be registered. Even if the house is not suitable for permanent residence, the person still has to be registered. The only nuance in that case is that the municipality has the option of going for a provisional registration.’
Aalter is also refusing to provide such provisional registrations. ‘Actually, you could say that the municipality is indirectly contributing towards domicile fraud,’ says Matthys. ‘Because the person is staying in a place, but he is not registered there. It is the municipality that is not doing what it should be doing here.’
'Protecting against slumlords'
‘This is not bullying at all, it is a good policy,’ responds mayor Pieter De Crem (Flemish Christian democrat/CD&V). Mr De Crem – a former deputy prime minister, minister of the interior and defence and a heavyweight within his CD&V party - has been mayor of Aalter for more than 30 years. He says he wants to protect people from slum landlords and make sure people do not end up in bad housing. But police statistics show that in 2023 and 2024 not a single case of abuse by a slum landlord was recorded. In previous years, there was an average of one case per year.
110 complaints at Home Affairs
At the Home Affairs Ministry - the General Directorate of Identity and Civil Affairs - they are aware of the stories from Aalter. The government department says it has received 110 complaints about domicile registration in Aalter since the end of 2023, i.e. in just over a year. 90 per cent of these complaints come from the Immigration Department (DVZ) and are from people with European nationality.
The immigration department, another part of the Home Affairs Ministry - concluded that in 51 cases Aalter did not apply the Aliens Act correctly when registering EU citizens in the municipality. Aalter received several e-mails explaining the correct procedure. However, since the beginning of this year, according to the immigration department, registrations and residence applications have been running more smoothly once again.
Investigation launched
In the course of Thursday it emerged that East Flemish prosecutors were now investigating whether the municipality of Aalter had violated anti-racism laws.