On 20 June 2025, the Belgian Competition Authority (BCA) published new guidelines regarding on-premise inspections (the Guidelines) which reflect the BCA’s current practice and replace older guidelines of December 2013 (see, attachment). The Guidelines are not controversial and do not contain surprising novelties. They offer a useful description of the principal rights and obligations of the parties that were made subject to a “dawn raid”.

Businesses, including corporations, natural persons, and associations, are required to submit to on-premise inspections by the BCA that were authorised by an investigating judge. They are carried out by an investigative team of the BCA (the Team) led by a competition prosecutor and seconded by IT specialists. At the start of the inspection, businesses will be presented with (i) an assignment in which the competition prosecutor describes the subject and the purpose of the inspection; (ii) the designation of experts by the chief competition prosecutor; (iii) the authorisation by the investigating judge; and (iv) the Guidelines.

The Guidelines indicate that the Team will have immediate access to each location where the business is operating, including offices, storage facilities, workplaces, and vehicles and do not have to wait for outside counsel to arrive. The Team will observe the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation and its statutory professional secrecy obligation. The Team also has the authority to visit the private homes of business executives and the professional addresses of outside consultants such as accountants and payroll managers.

During the inspection, the Team will focus on IT systems and will require the inside help of the staff member in charge of IT to explain and give access to the IT architecture of the “entire business” (this term is not defined). Cooperation in this area and other areas is key and extends to the duty not to communicate internally or externally regarding the inspection without the consent of the Team.

The document search involves all storage media and devices, including smartphones used for both private and professional purposes.

At the end of the inspection, the Team will remove from the selected files the documents that are considered to fall outside the scope of the inspection or that are covered by the Legal Professional Privilege (LPP) which concerns all communications, including annexes, between outside counsel who are a member of a bar of the European Union and their client. LPP also protects communications with members of the Belgian Institute of Company Lawyers (Instituut voor bedrijfsjuristen / Institut des juristes d’entreprise). This is a form of protection not recognised by the European Commission under EU law. The Guidelines contain instructions on how to deal with (i) disputes regarding protected or out-of-scope documents; and (ii) confidential information in the hands of the BCA.

The report of the inspection will contain detailed information regarding the various steps taken during the proceedings and will also allow for the recording of possible objections by the inspected business.