Brussels: Europe and the Arabs
The Belgian monarch, King Philippe, granted pardon three times last year, and this came in response to an inquiry from the Belgian News Agency to the Ministry of Justice. She added that in 2022, there will still be five royal pardons. The number varies slightly from year to year
The King annulls the rulings issued based on the proposal of the Minister of Justice. Last year this included two convictions for traffic offenses and fraud. These were always very old offenses (between 16 and 21 years old), and the statute of limitations had not yet expired. In all three cases, the pardon was a partial suspension of the sentence.
Last year, 591 people applied for clemency, nearly half the number in 2022, when the counter was 1,084 applications. This relates to the fact that the request for pardon is no longer explicitly stated when a request to pay a fine is received. In the past, this has led to a large number of allegations that have not been proven and therefore unacceptable.
This concerns approximately the same number of files submitted for French and Dutch. They are the two official languages in the country, and of the three files that were granted, two are in Dutch and one is in French. Belgians speak French in the half of Belgium near the border with France, while residents of the second half of the country near the Netherlands speak Flemish or Dutch.