Belgium’s Council of Ministers gave the green light on Saturday, 18 July 2026, to draft legislation that will allow authorities to collect and analyse Advance Passenger Information (API) on all travellers entering or leaving the country by air. The bill, tabled by Interior Minister Bernard Quintin and Asylum & Migration Minister Anneleen Van Bossuyt, transposes new EU regulations that require carriers to transmit passenger data to a central router before departure. Under the Belgian model, a single connection will be established between the EU router and the newly created National Travel Targeting Center (NTTC), housed within the National Crisis Centre. From there, data will be distributed in real time to the Federal Police, the Immigration Office and customs authorities. The aim is to spot high-risk travellers, identify forged documents and prevent irregular migration more quickly than today’s largely manual checks at airports such as Brussels-Zaventem and Charleroi. Ministers stressed that the draft law includes strict safeguards. Passenger records may be stored only for the periods laid down in EU law; access is limited to vetted officials; and the Data Protection Authority, the Police Information Oversight Body and the Council of State will all be asked for opinions. Nonetheless, privacy groups have already warned of potential profiling and ‘function-creep’; they are expected to lobby for shorter retention periods when the bill reaches Parliament after the summer recess. For companies moving staff into Belgium, the change is largely administrative—airlines already transmit API to several non-EU states—but the centralised NTTC should speed up secondary inspections that have occasionally delayed business travellers at Brussels Airport. Travel managers are advised to make sure employee booking systems capture passport details accurately, as carriers will face fines if data are incomplete or late. If adopted swiftly, the government hopes to have the NTTC operational in time for the peak Christmas travel season, well ahead of the full rollout of the EU Entry/Exit System across Schengen in 2027.
Source: News.belgium
