After his visit to Indian Prime Minister Modi last week, Bart De Wever boarded a plane again today for a new summit. This time with Italian Prime Minister and 'grande amica' Giorgia Meloni. On the agenda in Rome were the war in Ukraine, the state of European industry, and migration. VRT NWS journalist and Italy expert Willem Van Mullem tells us more. #vrtnwsterzake

"Ongelofelijke hebzucht om tweedeverblijver leeg te melken." ―Hardwerkende vastgoedmakelaar

De melkers worden gemelkt en zijn niet tevree. Owee. Vastgoed als investering zou verboden moeten zijn, het zorgt enkel maar voor parasitair gedrag.

cross-posted from: https://belgae.social/post/2046140

What’s the point of allowing money to expire? If you buy a top-up for a GSM account, what legit reason could there be for allowing carriers to screw over consumers on such an arbitrary basis? Indeed, if you buy phone credit in Belgium, it expires. I just bought a top-up card that had already expired because I did not notice the expiration date in tiny print.

Interesting to notice that some US states have banned gift cards that expire.

I would like to take a cheap day trip to another country. The destination does not matter but the route must go through Antwerp’s south station. I need to hop off there for a visit before continuing on.

I recall an EU rule that if a train ticket crosses a national border, then passengers have an automatic right to get off the train at any stop along the way and hang out before continuing on the same route with another train.

Of course I can buy a ticket to Antwerp South and then buy a separate ticket elsewhere, like Rotterdam for example. But that costs more. In principle it should be possible to specify origin and a “via” waypoint, and not specify the ultimate destination. I want to be told what destinations naturally happen to traverse Antwerp South.

Are there any search tools that can handle this?

cross-posted from: https://slrpnk.net/post/40597815

WTF Bob Dylan? A friend who is offline is blocked from buying tickets to Bob Dylan in Antwerp, Belgium. The concert is effectively exclusively for online people. Most likely cash payers must fuck off.

It’s exactly the kind of shit Bob Dylan should be bitching about in his songs. WTF, Bob Dylan?

“Experts in Europe warn that these devices are used to record strangers without their consent, possibly breaching EU law.”

“A small LED light is designed to indicate when recording is taking place, but RTBF's investigators found that tutorials explaining how to conceal the indicator are abundant and easily accessible online.”

Sometimes I have a hard time deciding who I despise more, parasite Mark Zuckerberg or its witless hosts who keep using its products—yes, Zuck's pronoun is it. Ban Ray-Ban, for frick's sake.

SNCB has a discount club called “Train+”. Membership gives discounted prices on off-peak travel. Found this in the terms and conditions:

9. Reimbursement of Train+

• Refund is possible if you have become Train+ via sncb.be or in the SNCB app, and provided you have not yet used Train+. The refund application must be submitted in writing to the Customer Service within 14 calendar days of purchase.
• In any other case, Train+ is not refundable.

The app is exclusively limited to people with smartphones and a will to lick the boots of either Google or Apple. The website is also exclusive due to shitty anti-bot challenges and deceptive gatekeeping (e.g. Tor users perpetually get a false error msg: “website under maintenance”).

Is it legal?

EU Regulation 2021⧸782 has this:

“In light of the development of online platforms selling passenger transport tickets, Member States should pay special attention to ensuring that no discrimination occurs during the process of accessing online interfaces or purchasing tickets.”

That is written in a recital, not an enactment. So IIUC it has no force. It’s merely the sentiment of the lawmakers.

SNCB has converted into a privatised profit-driven corporation that no longer receives government subsidies (supposedly). There is apparently less pressure on them to be fair and free from various forms of discrimination, so they can take the piss. It’s all about the bottom line.

Thanks to open data law, the website irail.be was created to give the public open access to rail schedules and routes. The site is no longer reachable.. at least not for me. Not sure if this is permanent or a temporary glitch.

I also posted this to !opendata@lemmy.sdf.org but can’t see my own post ATM, so could not use the crosspost function, perhaps because SDF is down.

Related:

https://fedia.io/m/opendata@lemmy.sdf.org/t/2724091/Why-is-train-data-shared-with-the-Belgian-gov

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/