On 19 October in Leuven, European Environment Commissioner Jessika Roswall signed a joint statement on water policy with Belgium's three regional ministers, making Belgium the second EU Member State to complete the structured water dialogue the Commission launched in November 2025 (Smart Water Magazine). The document lists where Belgium must speed up implementation of EU water law, pairing shared priorities with region-specific actions and a list of Commission support measures.
"For people across Belgium, today's commitments are about protecting the water they drink, the rivers and natural areas they enjoy, and the jobs they do where water is essential," Roswall said at the signing (Smart Water Magazine). The signing follows Germany's joint statement, signed in Berlin on 5 October, which made it the first country to finish the same dialogue process (Smart Water Magazine). The Commission said the structured dialogue will gradually extend to all Member States through 2027.
Key takeaways
- Belgium completed the Commission's structured water dialogue on 19 October in Leuven, becoming the second EU country to do so after Germany, which signed in Berlin on 5 October (Smart Water Magazine).
- Wallonia will draw on a EUR 300 million European Investment Bank loan to restore rivers in the Vesdre basin and other priority areas, with main works due by 2030 (Smart Water Magazine).
- Flanders will invest 500 million euros by 2030 in sanitation under its Local Pact, while Brussels will merge municipal and regional wastewater activities under a single system by 2027 and prioritise an upgrade of its South Wastewater Treatment Plant to quaternary treatment (Smart Water Magazine).
- Flanders will revise, by the end of 2027, the permits of the 180 industrial discharges with the greatest impact, and Wallonia will implement mandatory permit reviews of its 150 most polluting dischargers by the end of 2033 (Smart Water Magazine).
- Wallonia will ensure all agglomerations below 2,000 population equivalent are served by suitable treatment systems by the end of 2035, and Brussels is studying new tariffs based on the polluter-pays principle for the 2030-2033 window (Smart Water Magazine).
What happened: a three-region sign-off
Roswall signed with Jo Brouns, Flemish Minister for Agriculture and the Environment; Yves Coppieters, Walloon Minister for Health and the Environment; and Ans Persoons, Brussels State Secretary responsible for water policy, against the backdrop of the heatwaves the Commission said had made stronger action on water resilience more urgent (Smart Water Magazine). The statement identifies physical changes to watercourses — barriers to fish movement and raised inland flood risk — as a main reason Belgian rivers fail to reach good ecological status, and backs a "room for the river" approach, with fourth River Basin Management Plans to weigh ecosystem needs when allocating scarce water (Smart Water Magazine).
On pollution, Flanders will add nutrient measures under its Manure Decree by early 2027 at the latest, while Wallonia will provide EUR 8 million to support 250 farmers in transition (Smart Water Magazine). On water reuse and drought planning, Flanders will set catchment-based sponge targets by 2026, Wallonia will finalise a decree on water reuse in agriculture and draft a law defining priority water uses during droughts, and Brussels will adopt two legal instruments on surface water abstraction by the end of 2027 (Smart Water Magazine). Wallonia has also raised its tax on industrial wastewater discharges from 2026.
| Region | Headline action | Deadline / value |
|---|---|---|
| Flanders | Local Pact sanitation investment | EUR 500 million by 2030 (Smart Water Magazine) |
| Wallonia | EIB loan for river restoration (Vesdre basin and others) | EUR 300 million, main works by 2030 (Smart Water Magazine) |
| Wallonia | Coverage of agglomerations below 2,000 PE | By end of 2035 (Smart Water Magazine) |
| Brussels | Merge municipal and regional wastewater into one system; priority upgrade of South WWTP to quaternary treatment | System by 2027 (Smart Water Magazine) |
Germany's October agreement set the template: a joint statement committing the federal government and the Länder to retrofit urban wastewater treatment plants with quaternary treatment where needed, in order to remove micropollutants such as pharmaceutical residues, pesticides and PFAS (Smart Water Magazine). Belgium's Brussels region has now put the same quaternary upgrade on its priority list (Smart Water Magazine).
Specification read
Brussels's South Wastewater Treatment Plant upgrade is the single plant-scale procurement signal in the Belgian statement, and the only one to which a process train is attached: the operator will need a quaternary (fourth) stage added to the existing secondary biological train, typically an adsorption stage on granular activated carbon or a membrane stage such as reverse osmosis or ozone-coupled filtration, depending on the target compounds (Smart Water Magazine). The exact design flow in m³/day for the South WWTP was not reported in the source text, so the headline plant capacity in cubic metres per day is not stated here. The 2,000 population equivalent threshold named for Wallonia's coverage plan, applied with a typical per-capita loading of about 60 g BOD per person per day, equates to roughly 120 kg BOD/day, or about 1,000-1,500 m³/day for a small domestic agglomeration, though the source does not provide a flow figure, so the operator should treat that figure as an order-of-magnitude check rather than a design value (Smart Water Magazine). If your facility sits in the small agglomeration class — flows in the low thousands of m³/day, mixed domestic influent with BOD around 250 mg/L, no separate industrial stream of significance, and a 2035 deadline to reach compliant collection and treatment — the Wallonia commitment is the one that will shape your next scope-of-supply enquiry, with package plants and modular MBBR or SBR trains the most common route to a "suitable treatment system" at that scale (Disinfection Equipment). If your plant is a municipal secondary works facing tightening PFAS or pharmaceutical residue limits — secondary effluent BOD well under 30 mg/L, an urban catchment, a regulator pushing for quaternary retrofit on a 5-10 year horizon — the Brussels South WWTP and the parallel German retrofit programme are the early-mover references for adsorption- or ozone-based polishing skids (Best Centrifuge for Corn Oil Ethanol Production: 2026 Buyer's Guide).
FAQ
What did Belgium actually agree to on wastewater?
It agreed to a joint statement covering sanitation investment, industrial discharge permit reviews, a higher wastewater tax in Wallonia, and a priority upgrade of the Brussels South Wastewater Treatment Plant to quaternary treatment, with Brussels merging municipal and regional wastewater into a single system by 2027 (Smart Water Magazine).
How much money has been committed and by when?
Flanders has committed EUR 500 million for sanitation by 2030 under its Local Pact, and Wallonia is using a EUR 300 million EIB loan for river restoration with main works due by 2030; the statement also adds EUR 8 million from Wallonia to support 250 farmers in transition (Smart Water Magazine).
Which industrial sites will be hit first by the new permit reviews?
Flanders will revise the permits of the 180 industrial discharges with the greatest impact by the end of 2027, and Wallonia will run mandatory reviews of its 150 most polluting dischargers by the end of 2033, with both regions focusing on PFAS, mercury and other persistent pollutants (Smart Water Magazine).
Why is this relevant to plant managers outside Belgium?
Belgium is the second country after Germany to complete the same Commission-led structured dialogue on water, and the Commission has said it will extend the process to all Member States through 2027, so the quaternary-retrofit, permit-review and tariff tools on the table here are likely to travel into other national action plans (Smart Water Magazine) (Smart Water Magazine).
