Fireworks display regulations in Belgium: mayor's authorisation, pyro-pass and Peppol e-invoicing

Belgium has no national declaration comparable to the French CERFA: the administrative policing of fireworks belongs to the communes. The general police regulation of each commune or police zone forbids the use of fireworks without the prior written authorisation of the mayor (bourgmestre/burgemeester), including on private land in most cases. The organiser, or the display company on its behalf, files an application describing the venue, date, time, calibres and quantities, the pyrotechnician's name and insurance.

Deadlines vary from one commune to another: some regulations require the application at least 30 days ahead, others 60 days or two months, particularly where the rescue zone and the police must give an opinion. The mayor may impose conditions (distances, hours, road closures, a fire service watch) or refuse. Firing near a railway, a waterway or an airport additionally requires the agreement of the relevant operator.

In Wallonia, several communes require, on top of the mayor's authorisation, a class 3 classified-establishment declaration to the municipal environment department, on the Walloon public service form, generally at least two months before firing. This formality stems from the temporary-activities heading of the environmental permit; it is not applied uniformly and the commune states whether it requires it.

In Flanders and Brussels the logic is the same but the texts differ: municipal regulation, opinion of the rescue zone, possibly a regional authorisation for protected natural areas. A company firing in all three regions therefore keeps three template files. PyroDesk offers a formalities page per country and per region, listing the documents usually requested, and attaches each document to the display file.

The royal decree of 20 October 2015 on making pyrotechnic articles available on the market reserves categories F3, F4, T2 and P2 (and T1 except consumer products) to persons with specialist knowledge. Since 24 May 2024 those persons hold an authorisation issued by the minister's delegate, the director general of the Directorate-General Quality and Safety of the FPS Economy, drawn up according to the model annexed to the royal decree of 22 April 2024: the pyro-pass.

The pyro-pass is a document harmonised within the Benelux Union (Belgium, Netherlands, Luxembourg), valid for a maximum of five years, verifiable online by sellers, who must check the register before handing over articles and keep proof of the check for three years. The holder of an F4 authorisation is deemed authorised for F3, and a T2 holder for T1. Authorisations from other member states are recognised: a French pyrotechnician holding the F4-T2 certificate may buy F3, F4, T1 and T2 fireworks in Belgium.

Storage and sale of pyrotechnic articles require an administrative authorisation issued by the commune or the province where the store is located, after an opinion of the Safety Regulation Service of the FPS Economy; the application states net quantity, categories and storage conditions, and the authorisation has a limited duration. A private individual may not hold more than 1 kg of pyrotechnic material without authorisation; a professional therefore needs an authorised store or an agreement with a third-party store.

Breaches of the royal decree of 20 October 2015 are punished by criminal fines of 26 to 25,000 euros under articles XV.70 and XV.102 of the Code of Economic Law. On site the company applies the manufacturer's safety distances stated on each CE product and those imposed by the mayor; PyroDesk generates the site plan with the radius of each firing position to attach to the municipal application.

The company's liability insurance is requested in almost all municipal regulations and must be attached to the application; some communes also require a risk analysis drawn up with the pyrotechnician and a scaled plan showing access roads. These documents are produced directly from the PyroDesk file, in the client's language (French, Dutch via export, English).

Since 1 January 2026, every VAT-registered business established in Belgium must issue and receive structured electronic invoices for its B2B transactions, through the Peppol network in the Peppol BIS format; a PDF sent by e-mail is no longer a compliant invoice between businesses. PyroDesk produces its invoices in a structured format compliant with European standard EN 16931 and prepares their transmission through an accredited platform, so a Belgian operator stays compliant without changing tools.

The software gathers in one file the client, the venue, the firing plan, the products with their categories and net masses, the pyrotechnicians and their pyro-pass, the insurance certificate and the municipal documents. The Belgium formalities page recalls, for each region, the documents usually required and the deadlines encountered, with automatic reminders at D-60 and D-30 so the mayor's window is not missed.

Quotes, contracts and the client portal are multilingual; the invoice is produced in a structured electronic format ready for Peppol; the site plan and safety distances export to PDF for the rescue zone. The data remains what the operator entered: PyroDesk replaces neither the commune's nor the fire service's opinion, it prevents omissions and re-typing.