Belgium

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/46253530

The Belgian government signed on Thursday a Letter of Intent to acquire Electrabel's (ENGIE) entire nuclear operations in the country. Such a move would reverse the phase-out of nuclear energy legislation adopted in the early 2000s amid safety concerns. Belgian Prime Minister Bart De Wever stated that the country is aiming to reduce its reliance on fossil fuels and gain greater autonomy in managing its own energy supplies.

Someone told me banks are considered an “essential service”, and that essential services must give they serve two ways of operating. They cannot force you to use their app or website. They must either give you a way to get service over the phone, over the counter, or by mail.

The guy was talking a bit vaguely. Does a phone app and web app count as two different methods? Where is this law written?

I mentioned that some banks are breaking this law. He said: actually, you can change banks. I’m like, wtf, what if I don’t? That makes the law a bit useless, no? He said so long as there exists ONE bank that offers two access methods, other banks can do what they want.

Is the law really written that way? It means that one bank affects the legal compliance of another. Who wants to be the last bank to offer two access methods, considering they would then be trapped? So it seems to create a race condition for banks to simplify down to one means of access, which is perhaps the opposite effect of the lawmakers’ intent.

cross-posted from: https://belgae.social/post/1306984

Yes, it is batshit crazy that this happened, and that municipalities actually stripped people of Belgian nationality that they already acquired.

Even more puzzling is how flimsy Belgian nationality is -- that you can lose Belgian nationality so easily and without even any kind of wrong-doing.

The Federal Ombudsman says the “Immigration Office is exceeding its powers.” But AFAICT the immigration office is just making a request -- one that can and should be ignored.

Very bizarre that the municipality has these powers. Sure, the muni has the power to grant nationality. Fair enough. But I find it a bit disturbing that the muni has power to strip nationality. Such a serious assault on someone’s human right to self-determinism should be a federal procedure, no?

(crossposted to !right_to_unplug@sopuli.xyz)

Krefel and Electro Depot have TVs on display, but they have no ability to demo TV tuning ability. Electro Depot even sells indoor and outdoor antennas. Sales people said they actually are /not allowed/ to show anything on the screens other than the OEM demo video. WTF? Sales people are actually micromanaged by this constraint that prevents them doing their job.

I’m like: “sell me this TV.. show me that it has a working tuner.”
Sales: “can’t do that”

Electro Depot should be embarassed because they sell antennas too. Yet they cannot show that they actually work in their showroom.

Then I went to Vandan Borre. Same situation, but even more embarrassing: their demo radios are not powered. So you cannot even see whether a DAB radio decodes the album art and shows it. You cannot even hear how it sounds.

Vanden Borre staff: go see the FNAC showroom.

LOL. Are you fucking kidding me?

Also Vanden Borre staff: “broadcast TV does not exist in Belgium. It was eliminated. You have to subscribe to a provider (Telenet, Proximus, etc).”

This seems to explain my problem. But then why is Electro Depot selling antennas? The antennas cover both TV and radio ranges, so it could be for radio, but it’s obviously a bit off that they have no sign posting or disclosure to say TV tuning is impossible in Belgium.

cross-posted from: https://belgae.social/post/1289285

I think I may have found a gem here:

EN (machine translation, emphasis mine):

Article 3/5.[¹ The communication of federal administrative authorities is clear and recognizable. Federal administrative bodies communicate in a politically and commercially neutral manner. The obligation to communicate in a politically neutral manner shall not apply to the administrative bodies referred to in the second paragraph of Article 1(f). ]¹

What about that exception? We have:

1°[¹ administrative instance:
…
(f) the federal government's strategic bodies referred to in the Royal Decree of 19 July 2001 on the installation of the federal public services strategic bodies and relating to the personnel of the federal public services designated to form part of the cabinet of a member of a government or a college of a Community or Region; ]¹

I’m not going on a chase to dig that up. But I would like to know if this means all “SPF …” agencies (SPF Economy, SPF Mobility, SPF Finances, SPF Foreign Afairs, etc) are exempt from commercial neutrality.

I also wonder if this apparently accidental legal effect is also accidentally nullified by this clause:

Art. 9. Where the application for advertising relates to an administrative document of an administrative [¹ instance]¹ [² ...]² including a work protected by copyright, the authorization of the author or of the person to whom the rights of the author were transferred is not required to authorize the on-site consultation of the document or to provide explanations about it.

Because I suspect that shitty corps like Facebook have a clause that transfers copyright to Facebook, in which case a request to liberate FB publications by a public service can be brushed off. But then that raises another question. In Belgium, copyright holders cannot transfer their copyright (which is actually to protect the human creator). E.g. the creator of the Smurfs cartoon retains copyright ownership. But then if my understanding is true, does that mean Belgian law is catoring just for the corner case of copyright being transferred outside of Belgium?

cross-posted from: https://belgae.social/post/1289254

This is the 2024 update to the “Law of 11.04.1994”:

EN (machine translation):

Art.3/1.[¹ Federal administrative bodies inform citizens of federal regulations and, in particular, of the rights and obligations arising therefrom. This information includes at least the federal legislative and regulatory standards for the jurisdiction of the administrative body concerned. It is at least published on the website of the administrative body. ]¹

---

(1 Inserted by L 2024-05-12/18, art. 5, 007; Effective: 15-07-2024)

FR (original):

Art.3/1.[¹ Les instances administratives fédérales informent les citoyens de la réglementation fédérale et en particulier des droits et obligations qui en découlent. Cette information porte au moins sur les normes législatives et réglementaires fédérales relatives aux compétences de l'instance administrative concernée. Elle est à tout le moins publiée sur le site internet de l'instance administrative.]¹

---

(1 Inséré par L 2024-05-12/18, art. 5, 007; En vigueur : 15-07-2024)

The official website for federal statutes is https://www.ejustice.just.fgov.be/, which is an access restricted website that blocks people on the Tor network.

Do not gift a Bongo voucher to people you like, it will ruin their day(s).

The linked page has 2 “PDF” docs. But they are not really PDFs. If you wget them, they are HTML with javascript embedded.

So we can no longer simply download a PDF anymore. Apparently we must run a JavaScript application to get the PDF in a browser tab, then use pdf.js to save it. WTF? This breaks my script (which stores the URL as metadata on every PDF I fetch).

Other sites do this too. I’ve seen websites for restaurants pull this shit with their menus.

What’s the point?

A clip of beer was 1 day past the “best before” expiry, which implies a quality degradation not a safety matter. The grocer refused to sell it to me and said she had to put it in the back room. So I’m wondering, what’s the law on this, considering the EU has banned food waste?

I might assume the “consume before” dates on highly perishable food might be more controlled than quality dates on things like beer and sauces. I wonder if the grocer was treating all dates the same, and whether the store policy is equally simple.

What do grocers do with expired food in Belgium?

Note that in some countries it’s legal to sell expired food, so the answer isn’t necessarily obvious.

So, I take it the UK does not want our tourism.

"But the mouth is also disinfected". Oh, well alright then... Religion is insane, all of them.

The CJEU held that national courts may not order Internet Service Providers ('ISPs') to preventively, indefinitely and at their own expense install a filtering and blocking system applicable to all electronic communication between customers. This type of system breaches ISPs’ right to conduct business...

Not sure where DIGI is headquartered but this case was in Hungry. Belgian residents will be deciding whether to sign up for digi service so they might find this relevant.

cross-posted from !gdpr@sopuli.xyz

Gem from the article:

Under Article 221, §2 of the Belgian Data Protection Act of 30 July 2018, public bodies are exempt from GDPR fines in Belgium.

So Belgian public services have no incentive to comply with the GDPR.

Yikes. The money taken by fines does not disappear. It would normally move from one public pot to another public pot.

(update) less confusing source: https://eurocloud.org/news/article/no-gdpr-fines-for-public-sector-bodies-at-all-no-discrimination-and-no-problem/

“In Gent is de ontruiming van een illegale rave gisteren ontaard in een confrontatie tussen feestvierders en de politie. Een 100-tal mensen belaagde agenten. Er was uiteindelijk traangas én versterking van al het personeel nodig om de rust terug te brengen. 4 agenten raakten gewond, enkele feestvierders werden opgepakt. […] Bezoekers die het feest verlieten, konden niet terugkeren. De politie hoopte de rave zo zonder incidenten te laten doodbloeden. De ravers waren immers van plan om tot deze ochtend door te gaan. Dan zouden de sloopwerken van de oude discotheek beginnen . "Gisterenochtend rond 8.30 uur escaleerde de situatie. Enkele mensen wilden opnieuw binnen en hebben de aanwezigen opgejut", stelt Rasschaert.”

It's beyond me why raves are illegal or actively stopped. People are simply dancing to music, minding their own business. Especially in this case where the building was about to be destroyed the day after.

I have tried two TVs with 3 different tuners and 2 different antennas, in Brussels. One is an old pocket device with DVB-T. The tuner for the other TV (made in 2022) has these specs:

Tuner/Reception/Transmission
• Aerial Input: 75 ohm coaxial (IEC75)
• TV system: PAL I, PAL B/G, PAL D/K, SECAM B/G, SECAM D/K, SECAM L/L
• Video Playback: NTSC, SECAM, PAL
• Tuner bands: Hyperband, S-Channel, UHF, VHF
• Number of Preset Channels: 100
• Tuner Display: PLL

I’m surprised this TV is only a few years old yet there is no mention of DVB-T/2. A powered DVB-T2 antenna is connected to it. Neither finds any signals when autotuning. Is that expected? Wikipedia mentions a long list of stations for Belgium and some seem to be Brussels based.

Can anyone confirm or deny terrestrial TV broadcasts in Brussels or anywhere in the rest of Belgium?

Anyone know of any ways to spend GSM credit, obviously apart from calls, data, & text?

Here is my list:

1. De Lijn - you can send an SMS to De Lijn to order a single ticket. You get back a code that you show to the driver as you board.

That’s it. My whole list.

I have credit that will expire soon, so I am in a use-it-or-lose it situation and I don’t need a bus ride.

These are the consumer protection orgs and agencies:

1. SPF Economy (gov agency; gratis but no protection; communication problems)
2. Consumer Mediation Service (gov agency?; gratis but no protection)
3. Testachats (NGO; sometimes effective but ~€13/month)
4. ECC-Net (?; gratis but only for non-Belgian complaints)
5. Ombudsman for the Retail (NGO; gratis but tiny jurisdiction)

SPF Economy and Consumer Mediation Service share the same address. It’s unclear how they differ and whether they work together, but they are remarkably useless.

SPF Economy rarely even acknowledges receipt of complaints. They sometimes act in silence, so you are blind to whether they act at all. And sometimes they really take no action. They seem to have law enforcement powers but they do not use it.

Consumer Mediation Service has better communication than SPF Economy. They keep you informed. But if they have enforcement power, they are not using it.

Testachats will not even talk to you unless you become a subscribing member for ~€13/month. So the mediation services are financed by consumers. They don’t do court. They will only negotiate. Sometimes it gets results and I remain baffled as to why it gets results because they have courtroom phobia and AFAICT they do not score businesses or publish issues.

ECC-Net shares a building with Testachats. The EU requires every member state to designate a consumer protection org. APPARENTLY ecc-net serves to give non-Belgian complainants free access to Testachats to minimally comply with EU law. ECC-Net refuses to serve Belgian residents. Effectively, Belgian residents complaining about Belgian merchants must pay for a Testachats membership. Since that is entirely domestic, it falls through the cracks on EU rules. Correct me if I’m wrong.

Ombudscom is a gratis NGO but they only treat complaints against specific businesses that subscribe to Ombudscom. It’s (rightfully) the inverse of the Testachats model, as the merchant pays the bill for consumer protection. But it is useless if a business does not subscribe to them and I have no idea who subscribes.

simple warranty claim scenario: non-gratis

A product failed catastrophically inside the warranty period. This should be a trivial and straight-forward claim. It played out in this sequence:

1. The manufacturer ignored the warranty claim.
2. SPF Economy ignored the complaint about the ignored warranty claim. Did not even bother to contact the manufacturer.
3. Ombudscom: “that company is not a member and thus out of our purview”
4. Testachats was the only mediator to reach out to the manufacturer and establish communication. The manufacturer finally honored the warranty in the end.

So in the end it was only possible to get the warranty honored using Testachats. Otherwise the consumer would be forced to use the courts (and that’s not free either).

Apparently it’s possible to pay cash to a Google Pay retailer and top-up the account without having a bank account. But it’s not a global option.

Anyone know if this is possible in Belgium? Looks like Carrefour and MediaMarkt accept Gpay, but I’m not sure if that also means they can top-up Gpay. If yes, then the next question: is it possible to do that without a smartphone?

When a hyphen is involved in a Belgian address, it can be confusing because apparently there is ambiguity. There are addresses with these forms:

1. rue Whatever 62-64
2. rue Whatever 24-1
3. rue Whatever 1-2
4. rue Whatever 3-1
5. rue Whatever 6-8
6. rue Whatever 6-10
7. rue Whatever 6/8
8. Boulevard du Roi Albert 2 8-10

I believe sample 1 means there is one address or mailbox for two adjacent buildings.

Sample 2 apparently means mail box/slot 1 at building number 24

Sample 3 is tricky, but I would assume an odd and even number would never reflect adjacent buildings because usually odd and even are on different sides of the road. So is it fair to say that’s the same as case 2?

Sample 4 is more ambiguous because 1 and 3 could be adjacent buildings, but it’s perhaps bizarre to give a decreasing range. So I would guess it means box 1 at building 3. Correct?

Sample 5 is the most ambiguous. Does it mean box 8 at building 6, or building 6 and 8 combined? The only difference between case 1 and 5 is the size of the number. If the number is large, it becomes less likely to be a box number. But still it’s just guesswork.

Sample 6 could be a range of 3 buildings, or box 10 at building 6.

Sample 7 is rare, but has the same problem; though less ambiguous. I’m more inclined to say it means box 8 at building 6 because “/” would hopefully not be used to list building numbers.

Sample 8 is the ugliest, most confusing. The “2” is using an arabic digit rather than the roman numeral “II”. Note the very critical space between the 2 and the 8. Fuck whoever writes an address that way. Whenever the leading digit is a 2 or a 3 there is a risk that it’s part of a street name in someone’s honor. Without the critical space, it would refer to King Albert the 1st, building 28.

I use very unreliable email forwarding services for protection and control. Rationale:

• to detect data leaks (every email address I disclose is unique to the recipient)
• to disable an ephemeral address when it is abused

I pay no fees. My forwarding providers are likely running in some kid’s mom’s basement. Lots of messages get lost. It’s usually the worst kind of a loss: a blackhole. Which means the sender successfully connects and receives a well-sent status. The messages are lost after the sender is left with the false idea that it was delivered. I have no idea if the messages are lost by the forwarding provider or the email server of the ultimate destination.

In one case I discovered that a forwarding provider was silently dropping all messages no matter what email service I use. It’s a gratis service, so the idea of suing or taking action against the shitty provider would be controversial and likely unsuccessful. It could have been happening for months or even years before I discovered it was happening.

Email is inherently unreliable. It is what it is. But at the same time, Belgium has decided that sending an email carries the legal weight of a registered letter. Yikes! Indeed, something officially important for which my attention is critical and has legal consequences has a good chance of going to a black hole without my knowledge.

To worsen matters, the post service charges ~€10 to send a proper registered letter. That extortionate cost sufficiently drives senders to use email instead.

(crossposted from !exclusive_public_resources)

The Council of State is a court that handles appeals, often to challenge non-court decisions like that of a public enforcement body. E.g. you report to SPF Mobilité that an airline or rail operator did not compensate you for a delay or cancellation, and they give you a flippant rejection, the Council of State is your recourse.

The Council of State will not open a case unless you pay a few hundred euros to their bank account. They do not accept cash.

So you might think: I’ll just hire a lawyer with cash and the lawyer will open the case. Nope. Belgian lawyers are prohibited from accepting cash.

Surprise: the highest taxed country in the world managed to increase taxes!