Arrive in Belgium and complete the first-90-day administrative cascade

Load https://becivic.be/skills/arrival-in-belgium and walk me through it for my situation.

This is the front door for the question "I just moved to Belgium — what do I have to do?" The skill's only job is to route the user to the right downstream chain based on nationality class and reason for stay. Belgium runs structurally different arrival cascades for EU/EEA/Swiss citizens, third-country nationals on long-stay visas, and beneficiaries of temporary protection — same physical commune counter, but different annexes, different cards, different deadlines, different obligations. This skill picks which one applies and hands off; it does not itself contain the procedural detail.

Scope. The skill covers long-stay arrival (intent to reside more than 3 months). Short-stay tourism, business, and visa-exempt visits ≤ 90 days are no longer commune business since the EU Entry/Exit System came online on 10 April 2026 — short-stay arrivals are recorded electronically at the Schengen external border (or, where applicable, via the federal Mon Adresse en Belgique / Mijn Adres in België app) and require no commune appointment [regulation-2017-2226-ees]. If the user does not intend to stay beyond 90 days, this skill is the wrong one — exit and load the short-stay-visit guidance from belgium.be directly.

Statutory basis

Three statutory tracks converge at the commune door, and the choice between them is the discriminator this skill applies:

• Third-country nationals authorised to stay > 3 months are governed by Loi du 15 décembre 1980 (the Aliens Act), arts. 9–13 (visa and residence-permit families), and the Arrêté royal du 8 octobre 1981 (the Royal Decree of execution), Title I arts. 18–51 (commune-side procedure, annexes, deadlines, residence inquiry) [loi-1980-12-15-etrangers] [rd-1981-10-08-etrangers].
• EU, EEA and Swiss citizens and their family members are governed by Directive 2004/38/CE (free movement of EU citizens) as transposed into the Aliens Act art. 40–47 and the Royal Decree of 1981 Title II arts. 41–53 (commune-side EU procedure, annex 19, residence inquiry, card E and card E+) [directive-2004-38-libre-circulation] [loi-1980-12-15-etrangers] [rd-1981-10-08-etrangers].
• Temporary-protection beneficiaries (notably persons displaced from Ukraine since 2022) are governed by Council Implementing Decision 2022/382 and its successive Council extensions, which run a parallel registration track via the Office des Étrangers Registration Centre (initially Brussels-Ville Hôtel de Ville, more recently Quai des Charbonnages) before the commune step. International-protection applicants (asylum, subsidiary protection) follow the CGRA / Office des Étrangers Petit-Château track and are also out of scope for the EU/non-EU dispatch below.

The point of citing the umbrella statutes here is so that an agent loading this skill mid-conversation has the legal frame for the routing decision. The procedural detail — annex numbers, deadlines, fees, document checklists — lives in the children.

Eligibility and route

Read the user's situation in this order. Each row is exclusive — stop at the first match.

1. Beneficiary of temporary protection (Ukraine displacement, or any future TP scheme) — the user has been issued a temporary-protection registration (annex 15-equivalent, A card "BFTM"), or is in the process of being registered. The TP track takes precedence over both EU and non-EU dispatch even when the person is from a non-EU country, because it has its own statutory base, its own card, its own commune touchpoint, and substantially shorter timelines. → load temp-protection-onboarding-ukraine.

2. EU / EEA / Swiss national — the user holds a passport or national ID card from any of the 27 EU Member States, the three EEA States (Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway) or Switzerland. They do not need a visa to enter or to settle; their residence right flows from citizenship, not from a permit. → load arrival-in-belgium-eu.

3. Non-EU national on a long-stay D visa or single-permit residence authorisation — the user holds a third-country passport with a Belgian D visa already affixed (any motive: work, study, family, researcher, humanitarian, religious, etc.), or arrived under a single-permit work-and-residence decision. → load arrival-in-belgium-non-eu.

4. Non-EU national applying from within Belgium — the user is in Belgium under a Schengen C visa, visa-free entry, or a different residence status, and intends to apply for a long-stay residence right from inside the territory (typical for in-Belgium family reunification, Article 9bis humanitarian regularisation, or Article 9ter medical regularisation). The track here goes through annex 19ter ("orange card") or annex 9bis / 9ter receipts, not annex 15. → load arrival-in-belgium-non-eu for the commune-side dispatch; the dossier-side walk is handled by family-reunification-arrival (sponsor-driven angle), regularisation-9bis or regularisation-9ter (deferred to v1.1).

5. Belgian national returning from abroad — out of scope for v1. The user must re-register in the commune of intended residence (address-change-within-belgium covers internal moves; the cross-border return is similar in mechanics but adds a consular-side reactivation). Flag and refer to commune.

If the user does not fit any of the rows above (e.g. dual-nationality scenarios where one nationality is EU-eligible and the other is not), the EU citizenship dominates — load arrival-in-belgium-eu. If the user is unsure whether their nationality class is EU/EEA/Swiss, default to non-EU and let the commune correct the dispatch at the appointment.

The discriminator is intentionally prose, not enum. An agent loading this skill has the user's full conversational context — passport country, visa stamp, prior moves, family situation. Nationality class is something the agent reasons about, not something the schema forces into a closed set.

Process — high level

Whichever child chain is dispatched, the cascade has the same shape, with branch-specific differences in who acts when and what documents are issued:

1. Commune appointment within the statutory window from arrival (8 working days for D-visa pathways under RD-1981-10-08 art. 41bis–42; up to 3 months for EU citizens under Directive 2004/38; per-scheme for TP). The commune issues a provisional document (annex 15 / 49 / 19 / 19ter / TP-equivalent — see arrival-declaration-at-commune for the routing matrix).
2. Police domicile inquiry (enquête de résidence / woonstcontrole). A district officer visits the declared address, typically once, sometimes twice if the first attempt finds the user absent. The inquiry establishes effective residence for the file. Timeline varies — Brussels-Capital communes typically 2–6 weeks; Flemish and Walloon communes vary more widely.
3. DVZ decision and card production. For EU citizens: the commune itself decides under delegated authority. For non-EU pathways: the file is transmitted to DVZ; on a positive decision, the eID-format residence card is produced by FedICT-BELPIC and collected at the commune.
4. Adjacent obligations — register a NISS, enrol with a mutualité (sickness fund), open a Belgian bank account, register vehicle and licence, and where applicable enrol in the regional integration parcours. Each child chain orchestrates these as requires edges to their own component skills; this parent does not duplicate them.

The chronology is broadly serial but several adjacent steps (NISS, mutualité, bank) can run in parallel once the user has the provisional annex in hand.

Known surprises

Failures the agent should surface proactively, regardless of which branch is dispatched:

• Commune-fee payment is Bancontact-only at most communes. Cash and international cards are refused at the counter. A failed Bancontact payment terminates the appointment and forces a rebook. This applies to every branch. Open a Belgian bank account first if there is room in the calendar; otherwise pre-arrange Bancontact payment with a Belgian-resident sponsor.
• The 8-working-day window for D-visa pathways runs from the date stamped in the passport at the Schengen external border, not the day the user arrived at their commune address. Internal travel (D-visa entry via Frankfurt, then onwards to Brussels by Thalys) does not extend the deadline. Late declaration triggers a EUR 200 administrative fine; severe delay can prevent conversion to a definitive card.
• The 3-month window for EU citizens is generous compared to the D-visa window — but the supporting documents (right-of-residence evidence: employment, study, resources, family) must be at the commune within 3 months of the application itself. A registration that goes unbacked produces a registration refusal and a fresh start.
• The 1 September 2025 reform required EU citizens to bring a complete dossier at the first appointment in many regions; the previous flexibility of supplementing evidence at follow-up appointments has narrowed substantially. Confirm the per-commune practice in advance.
• Brussels-Capital language regime. In the 19 communes of the Brussels-Capital region, the applicant chooses French or Dutch as the language of administration at the first commune appointment, and that choice binds future commune interactions. State the choice in advance and align sworn-translation language accordingly.
• The dispatch this skill makes is provisional — the commune officer at the service population / vreemdelingenzaken makes the final assignment, and may move the user to a different annex than the agent predicted (e.g. an EU citizen who attempts to register before exercising free-movement rights may be told to come back with employment evidence, restarting the 3-month clock). Re-dispatch if the commune corrects the route.

Verify with

The authoritative pages an agent can re-fetch to refresh this skill:

• DVZ / Office des Étrangers — dofi.ibz.be/en/themes/citizens-european-union (EU branch) and dofi.ibz.be/en/themes/third-country-nationals (non-EU branch).
• belgium.be — federal portal entry point at belgium.be/en/family/international/coming_to_belgium.
• EU 2004/38 directive — full text on EUR-Lex: eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=CELEX:32004L0038.
• Aliens Act / Royal Decree — Justel consolidated texts at etaamb.openjustice.be (NUMACs above).

The children listed in requires carry the per-pathway documentation, deadlines, and per-commune variation. This parent does not duplicate them.

Verify with your commune (or relevant authority) before filing — procedures vary and change.

References

See frontmatter references for full bibliographic detail. Inline tags above use the [id] shorthand.