Language-Aware Legal Form Mapping for Belgian Companies (BE.CCD)
Release date: 2026-07-21
Release details
Belgium is a multilingual country, and legal forms are often available in both French and Dutch (e.g., SRL – Société à responsabilité limitée / BV – Besloten Vennootschap). Previously, the language returned for a company's legal form in the BE.CCD data source depended on the internal order of values in our metadata, rather than on the company's actual location - which could result in the "wrong" language being shown for a given company.
We've now improved this by determining the legal form language based on the postal code of the company's registered address, aligning with Belgium's regional language areas:
- 1000–1499 → FR
- 1500–3999 → NL
- 4000–7999 → FR
- 8000–9999 → NL
As a result, companies located in Dutch-speaking regions will now consistently receive their legal form in Dutch (e.g., BV), and companies in French-speaking regions will receive it in French (e.g., SRL). For companies located in the Brussels-Capital Region, the legal form defaults to French.
This change applies to the BE.CCD data source only.