The Autorité de protection des données — Gegevensbeschermingsautoriteit in Dutch — is Belgium's independent data protection authority. It supervises compliance with the GDPR and Belgian data protection law, handles complaints and mediation, conducts inspections, issues binding decisions and sanctions, and advises on legislation affecting the processing of personal data. Because many EU institutions and international bodies are based in Brussels, its caseload frequently has a cross-border dimension.
What the APD publishes
- Décisions of its Litigation Chamber, published with reasoning
- Avis, its formal opinions on draft legislation and regulatory proposals
- Recommandations on specific processing contexts
- Legislative recommendations proposing changes to Belgian law
- Authorisations for particular processing activities
- Inspection service updates and annual reports
Why it matters for compliance teams
The APD's Litigation Chamber issues a steady stream of reasoned decisions, and several have had effects well beyond Belgium — its work on consent frameworks in digital advertising being the clearest example, since the infrastructure it ruled on was used across the entire European market.
Seqlense DOC indexes APD decisions, opinions and recommendations in full text alongside EDPB material and the other national authorities, so a privacy team can track a Belgian decision with pan-European consequences as it happens.