Belgium registration issue

[miha90]

I own a 31ft sailing boat currently registered in Belgium as that is where it was bought some 10 years ago. Currently I am in the Med. It looks like the Belgiums have now for some reason decided that at least 1/2 of any boat has to be owned by their citizen for you to renew the registration there. It looks like they don't want our money any more.
How would you solve this? Obviously there are going to be a lot of people with this problem so solutions are going to be appreciated.

 

[Momac]

Can you not register the boat in another country?

 

[Wansworth]

It’s a problem for some Spanish who registered under the Belgium flag as a flag of convenience which maybe the Belgium’s don’t like?

 

[Roberto]

I own a 31ft sailing boat currently registered in Belgium as that is where it was bought some 10 years ago. Currently I am in the Med. It looks like the Belgiums have now for some reason decided that at least 1/2 of any boat has to be owned by their citizen for you to renew the registration there. It looks like they don't want our money any more.
How would you solve this? Obviously there are going to be a lot of people with this problem so solutions are going to be appreciated.

Big problem for *a lot* of Italians, a good number have recently renewed/modified in advance the Lettre de Pavillon to get a further 5year validity period.
Meanwhile, Slovenian, Polish and (sic) French are under scrutiny as possible migration flags.

Just for info, a 1800+ messages thread about this very subject:
http://forum.amicidellavela.it/showthread.php?tid=135816

 

[macd]

How would you solve this?

The first step to any solution would be to ask where you are resident and what is your nationality. I see the "from France" stuff about you, but that doesn't clearly answer either question. (I guess that you might be keen to avoid French taxes, but that would only be...a guess.)

 

[westhinder]

I own a 31ft sailing boat currently registered in Belgium as that is where it was bought some 10 years ago. Currently I am in the Med. It looks like the Belgiums have now for some reason decided that at least 1/2 of any boat has to be owned by their citizen for you to renew the registration there. It looks like they don't want our money any more.
How would you solve this? Obviously there are going to be a lot of people with this problem so solutions are going to be appreciated.

There are quite a number of changes to the rules governing Belgian boats which will not bother you if your boat remains outside of Belgian waters. But as you say the requirement of 50% Belgian ownership is new and will affect the people abroad who used the Belgian flag as a flag of convenience to escape the French rules about safety equipment to be carried or distance allowed from a safe port. In any French port you will find any number of small motorboats wearing a Belgian ensign for those reasons. I would be surprised if the French authorities had not urged Belgium to do something about that.
One way around it would be to set up a Belgian company which owns 50% of the boat, then you comply with that requirement, but then you would have to comply with a couple more requirements for yachts which are used commercially.
To be honest, this does not seem unreasonable. I would not be shocked either if/when France closes a VAT-loophole which is now used by a number of Belgian owners to avoid paying VAT on their boat. That is the reason you see so many French-flagged boats in Belgian marinas. Would it not be nice if EU member states stopped being tax havens or flags of convenience for one another? ?

 

[Lorrendraaier]

According to Belgian legislation, the changes were to be effective as from 1 January 2019. For some reason it was postponed and halfway 2019 it was no longer possible to register under the previous circumstances.
The criteria to register were changed, I suspect, because the number of foreign owned boats was probably exceeding the number of Belgian owned boats.

If only navigating the internal waters, the ICP remains the cheapest option to consider. Otherwise the Polish flag is becoming a popular alternative.

 

[miha90]

There are quite a number of changes to the rules governing Belgian boats which will not bother you if your boat remains outside of Belgian waters. But as you say the requirement of 50% Belgian ownership is new and will affect the people abroad who used the Belgian flag as a flag of convenience to escape the French rules about safety equipment to be carried or distance allowed from a safe port. In any French port you will find any number of small motorboats wearing a Belgian ensign for those reasons. I would be surprised if the French authorities had not urged Belgium to do something about that.
One way around it would be to set up a Belgian company which owns 50% of the boat, then you comply with that requirement, but then you would have to comply with a couple more requirements for yachts which are used commercially.
To be honest, this does not seem unreasonable. I would not be shocked either if/when France closes a VAT-loophole which is now used by a number of Belgian owners to avoid paying VAT on their boat. That is the reason you see so many French-flagged boats in Belgian marinas. Would it not be nice if EU member states stopped being tax havens or flags of convenience for one another? ?

I guess opening a company in Belgium would be an option for somebody that has a fleet of boats or a mega yacht registered over there. The sad part is that avoiding taxes was never the goal here. I admit it was convenient but simply put the boat was build there thus the flag. I guess the money that their government earned due to boats like mine was not enough to keep the previous legislation. In theory you could be on the other side of the world with no options at all to register your boat.