Investing in Wallonia | Setting up a business | Setting up your own company

In Wallonia, you can start out in business and set up a company, whatever its legal form, in no time. In fact, all the required formalities will take you no longer than 3 days.
Before doing anything else, any SME, natural person or legal entity who wants to operate as a commercial enterprise must be registered with the Banque Carrefour des Entreprises (Crossroads Bank for Enterprises), a one-stop shop for enterprises that is approved by the authorities, and have a management aptitude certificate issued by the Federal Public Service (FPS) Economy, SMEs, Independent Professions and Energy.

PROCEDURES TO BE FOLLOWED BY A LEGAL ENTITY (COMPANY) to set up a company in belgium :

1. Submit an application to a banking institution to open a bank account in the name of the company.

2. Draw up or have a consultant or lawyer draw up the company’s deed of incorporation.

3. Draw up a three-year business plan : a summary or short presentation of the planned activities on one or two pages. It must generate interest by showing the potential for the product on the market, the field of activity, the innovation or originality of the product, its development stage (nature of the risk) and the financial implications.
This plan should end with the financial plan, which will serve as a basis for your applications for capital finance and any bank loans.

4. Request a management aptitude certificate from the FPS Economy, SMEs, Independent Professions and Energy.

5. Go to see a solicitor (notaire) :
- who will validate and authenticate the deed of incorporation and the business plan
- who will file the deed of incorporation & register the company with the Crossroads Bank for Entreprises: the solicitor will send an excerpt of the deed of incorporation to the clerk’s office of the commercial court, which will grant the company its unique enterprise number, then the solicitor takes care of its registration with the BCE.

6. The solicitor contacts the services of the Belgian Official Gazette (Moniteur Belge) for the publication of the deeds of incorporation (800€ for a SA, and 500€ solicitors’ fees).

7. Activation of the unique enterprise number of the legal entities : the company director must go to a one-stop shop for enterprises with this number, which, after checking for example the diploma conditions necessary to exercise an activity, will definitively activate the number.
For natural persons, the one-stop shop directly registers the company with the BCE and transmits the number after checking business aptitudes, i.e. the basic management knowledge as well as any proof of specific professional aptitudes. It will then grant the company the status of a commercial enterprise.

8. It must then contact a social-accounting secretariat (often the same as the one-stop shop for enterprises) and register with a social insurance fund and mutual insurance company.

USEFUL ADDRESSES