CMS Belgium

For over 30 years, we have been advising local and international businesses operating in Belgium as well as a large number of public sector actors. Today, we have become one of the country’s leading firms, with about 100 lawyers, of which 22 partners, working out of offices in Brussels, Antwerp and Luxembourg.

Clients appreciate our entrepreneurial and team spirit as well as the strong relationships we build with them. We believe that lawyers need to understand their clients’ business to provide to-the-point, inventive legal and tax advice. We work efficiently and our fees and arrangements are transparent and clear. That is why clients regularly trust us with the most delicate and complex cases.

Our teams assist clients across a wide range of expert practice and sector areas including: Banking & Finance, Commercial, Competition, Consumer products, Corporate, Dispute Resolution, Employment, Energy, Funds, Hotels & Leisure, Insurance, Intellectual Property, Lifesciences/Pharmaceuticals, Private Clients, Private Equity, Public Law, Public Procurement & PPP, Real Estate & Construction, Tax and TMT.

Recent Firm News & Legal Updates

The Belgian Competition Authority recently examined the sustainability initiative of IDHTransforming Markets and certain large retail chains to promote living wages in the banana sector
under competition law. The initiative in question aims to limit the gap between actual wages and
living wages in the banana sector, and concerns fresh bananas coming from companies with five or
more employees and sold as branded or under private label products on the Belgian market by the
majority of retailers.

Following an enquiry initiated in 2017 and dawn raids carried out the same year, the Competition
College of the Belgian Competition Authority concluded on 13 April 2022 its investigation into illegal
exchanges of confidential commercially sensitive information via wholesalers and imposed a total of
36 million EUR of fines on four cigarette manufacturers.

In 2021, the Belgian Competition Authority imposed a fine of EUR 859,310 on several companies in the French Caudalie group for breaching competition law by imposing minimum prices and restricting active and passive sales in the framework of its selective distribution network. On December 1 2021, the Market Court annulled the Belgian Competition Authority’s decision. A new decision imposing the same fine was adopted on January 20, 2023.

Firm Offices in Member Jurisdiction

Belgium

Brussels
Antwerpen

Firm Offices in Other Jurisdictions

Europe

Luxembourg, Luxembourg

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Practice Groups
Environmental, Social & Governance (ESG)
Environmental, Social & Governance (ESG)