Once upon a crisis in Belgium

Manual and digital contact tracing of the coronavirus

• Franck Dumortier

In Belgium, the management of the COVID-19 crisis quickly led to the setting up of a centralized and sensitive database, considered necessary to implement manual contact tracing. Nevertheless, the legal framework regulating this database is at the center of many controversies related both to the GDPR’s data minimization rule and to the Constitutional division of competences between the federal and the federated entities in the kingdom. Consequently, the road to a compliant solution has been – and still is – the subject of heated debates which, unfortunately, could not take place with all the required transparency.