BE-DRC Trust Territory transitional citizenship (Belgian Congo)

This route covers the transitional Belgian-nationality pathway for Belgo-Congolese persons of Belgian origin tied to the former Belgian Congo. The Belgian Congo was an annexed colony under Belgian sovereignty from 1908 to 1960, becoming independent as the Democratic Republic of the Congo on 30 June 1960. The Loi du 4 juin 1964 established transitional citizenship preserving the nationality rights of Belgian-origin descendants connected to the territory, and the Convention belgo-congolaise sur la nationalité of 1965 set up a bilateral framework on dual-nationality recognition between Belgium and the DRC. That bilateral framework was largely superseded by the 1973 Zairianisation decree under Mobutu, but Belgium retains the transitional cohort's claims as a matter of jurisprudence.

Dual nationality is recognised for Belgo-Congolese nationals: the Cour de cassation (1ère chambre, 30 mars 2017, P.16.0123.F) confirmed that the effective dual-nationality regime in force since the Loi du 27 décembre 2006 (effective 28 April 2008) allows Belgo-Congolese citizens to retain Belgian nationality regardless of whether they also hold DRC citizenship.

The Belgo-Congolese (DRC) diaspora is one of Belgium's larger naturalisation cohorts (on the order of 2,500 acquisitions per year), combining residence-based acquisition under Article 12bis with the Trust-Territory transitional cohort under the Article 24 recouvrement (recovery) mechanism.

Belgian nationality is an exclusive federal competence (Constitution Art 8), administered through the Code de la nationalité belge (CNB, Loi du 28 juin 1984), as amended through the Loi du 18 juin 2024. Note that the 1973 Zairianisation cohort remains under-recognised within this framework.

Cessation of Belgian nationality is governed by Article 22 (automatic loss, now subject to a proportionality assessment), Article 23 (voluntary renunciation), and Article 23/1 (judicial revocation for terrorism or serious offences). Following the Court of Justice of the European Union's rulings in Tjebbes (C-221/17) and Rottmann (C-135/08), the requirement of an individual proportionality assessment before any loss of nationality that also entails loss of EU citizenship was codified into Belgian law by the Loi du 18 juin 2024. The Constitutional Court (Cour Constitutionnelle) reaffirmed this individual proportionality requirement in its decision 158/2024.

Federal structure and regional integration

The Code de la nationalité belge is federal statute and applies uniformly across the French-, Dutch- and German-language regions. The integration condition required for naturalisation is, however, satisfied through regionally administered frameworks under the competency allocation reflected in Article 12bis — the Flemish inburgering programme, the Walloon parcours d'intégration, the Brussels primo-arrivants scheme, and the German-speaking Community's integration Dekret. Earlier Constitutional Court jurisprudence (decisions 122/2013, 73/2014 and 198/2014) and the case law of the Conseil d'État and the Court of Cassation further shape the interpretation of these nationality provisions.