Is a birth certificate Required in Belgium?

I'm not an EU citizen and never had to show a birth cert. The worst part of coming to Belgium was the visa process (genuinely horrific experience) so lucky you. France are obsessed with Birth certs and don't understnad that other countries barely use them. Belgium is a beaurocratic nightmare- everything is so complicated- but I don't think no birth cert wil make a difference.

@aleksmedis Oh thank you for this great news.

Concerning the dilemma of the birth certificate. I was surprised that it's a hurdle that can make some treated far worse than a stateless and undocumented immigrant. I know only about Germany, which doesn't require that certificate for health insurance. But in The Netherlands it's required for what's called “The first registration”, just as in France.

The idea behind requiring the birth certificate is, in my opinion, absurd for all practical purposes.

In France, they have a system in place, where in the absence of the certificate, your contributions are paid using a technical social security number. That Social Security number cannot be used to for getting benefits. You also pay your taxes normally like everyone else, you got nothing other than your salary. So if you get sick, you are a tourist in the country. Just a tourist with unlimited right to work, plus the great disadvantage of contributing to an insurance scheme that you cannot benefit from in any way.

Also, bureaucracy is everywhere, the only place where it's very limited, is in Nordic Countries, where things are far more straight forward.

Hello,

as an EU, you won't need your birth certificate.

You'll just need your French ID card and our gov will access your data through the EU network.

I believe in such cases there is an procedure to declare under honor at a notary or civil registry your parents. This will then get official and must be registered in the population register of the country/s  where you are national. In Belgium it is a similar procedure for asylum seekers because in most of the cases they are escaping war and it is impossible to produce a birth certificate.

In my opinion best is to check with your EU country you are national if they can do this procedure to correct your birth certificate and then you can use it anywhere and avoid having problems with it whole life.

@Edigj

Hi!

Dealing with notary sounds like a very nice trick. But the EU country of which I am citizen, doesn't register the parents of its citizen, if not born in it, and if none of his/her parents has been citizen or resident of it. Seemingly, leaving it to the country of birth of its citizen. This is despite providing an original birth certificate with parents information during the naturalization process (after which one become citizen).

In France, the requirement of the birth certificate get very specific, there is no way around it; it should be original (which might mean from the country of origin) and complete (with all parents details). Interestingly, refugees and undocumented migrants, who have no documents whatsoever, not even a birth certificate, don't get insured by the general insurance scheme, but rather by the state (given that their income per year doesn't bypass a threshold: around 9000 Euro).  Legally working and residing residents however has no way around not providing the birth certificate, the lacking of which deprives them of all rights a tourist might not have..

In fact even pension rights are gone; unemployment, maternity.. you name it.