Belgium Proposes Mandatory Drone Registration Amid Legal Concerns
Belgium's National Security Council has announced a plan for mandatory drone registration, aiming to enhance security. However, this initiative raises significant legal and technical challenges, diverging from existing EU regulations.
Key facts
- Belgium's drone registry plan could conflict with EU regulations.
- Mandatory registration may impose significant costs on operators.
- Existing EU rules already require operator registration and Remote ID.
5 minute read
Belgium has declared a new hardline stance on airspace security: register every single drone, or face the possibility of it being shot down. The decision, fast-tracked by the National Security Council following a week of airport chaos in November 2025, signals a dramatic "security-first" pivot. However, aviation experts warn that this national registry breaks with European Union norms, potentially creating a legal and logistical nightmare that does little to stop actual threats.^2
The crackdown follows a chaotic week where unidentified aerial systems (UAS) forced the repeated closure of Brussels (Zaventem) and Liège airports, stranding hundreds of passengers and grounding cargo flights. Incursions were also reported near the Kleine-Brogel airbase, a facility known to house U.S. nuclear weapons.
Defense Minister Theo Francken described the incidents not as hobbyist errors, but as calculated espionage. “These are (semi-)professional drones flying in formation, which not everyone can do,” Francken told reporters, noting the behavior suggested a “clear command targeting Kleine-Brogel.”
Faced with what he termed a “hybrid war against Europe,” Francken secured a €50 million emergency investment for anti-drone technology, including "capture-net" systems and interceptors. His directive to the military was blunt: “The orders and directives are clear: hostile drones, if possible, will be shot down.”
Under the new plan, every drone airframe—not just the operator—must be registered in a national database. Any drone flying without this registration could automatically be classified as "hostile."
Interior Minister Bernard Quintin defended the severity of the measures during the crisis. “We cannot ban all drones, because we also need them for our security,” Quintin said, “but I want to emphasise that you can incur severe penalties if you fly a drone over the airport and endanger safety.”
While the security logic is clear, the regulatory execution puts Belgium on a collision course with Brussels' own EU institutions. The current European Union Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) framework focuses on registering the operator (the pilot or organization), not cataloging every individual plastic airframe.
By demanding a national-level registry for every device, Belgium is effectively creating a trade barrier. A drone legal to fly in France or Germany would technically become "hostile" the moment it crosses the Belgian border unless it is re-registered—a bureaucratic hurdle that undermines the Single Market. Furthermore, for the registry to work, drones would need specific Belgian-compliant Remote ID hardware. This could force manufacturers to build Belgium-specific models, raising costs for hobbyists and potentially invalidating the "C0" class certification for lightweight drones under 250 grams.
Perhaps the biggest risk is the "hostile" designation itself. Aviation experts point out that during the heat of the "drone panic," confusion was rampant.16 Some "drone" sightings turned out to be police helicopters or lights from ground towers.
If security services are authorized to engage any unregistered blip on a radar, the chance of a "false positive" is high. In dense urban airspace, a hobbyist’s stray toy or a cross-border medical delivery drone could be mistaken for an enemy combatant.
Critics argue that malicious actors—the very people flying in formation over nuclear bases—are unlikely to self-register their weapons in a government database. As a result, the new registry imposes fees and friction on law-abiding businesses while offering no guarantee of catching the real saboteurs.
Belgium’s unilateral move risks becoming a kind of aviation "Bexit"—a departure from the harmonized EU framework. Instead of a national registry, experts suggest Belgium should focus on the rigorous enforcement of existing Remote ID rules and the coordinated intelligence sharing that the EU’s "U-Space" initiative is designed to provide.
As Europe moves from episodic policing to continuous defense, the solution likely lies in networked sensors that can tell a friend from a foe—not in a database of plastic toys.
