Belgium sits near the easier end of European repatriations, and the reasons are structural rather than incidental. It’s an EU member state, a Strasbourg Convention signatory alongside the UK, and Brussels Airport has genuinely strong direct links to London. The one thing that catches families off guard is how local the administration actually is.
Everything runs through the commune
Unlike France or the UK, Belgium doesn’t centralise death registration nationally or even regionally. It happens at commune level. The local civil registry, the Service de l’Etat civil in Wallonia or the Dienst Burgerlijke Stand in Flanders, issues both the death certificate and the international transport permit that eventually lets remains leave the country. This has a knock-on effect on language: documents from a death in Flanders come out in Dutch, from Wallonia in French, and from the small German-speaking area around Liege and Eupen in German. All of it needs certified English translation regardless.
Strasbourg Convention membership does real work here
Because Belgium and the UK are both Strasbourg Convention signatories, the commune’s transport permit is accepted directly by UK authorities without an additional layer of consular legalisation. That’s not a small thing. It’s one of the clearest, most concrete reasons Belgium moves faster than most non-European corridors on this site.
When the Parquet takes over
Natural deaths with clear documentation move through relatively cleanly. Anything unnatural or sudden brings in the Parquet, Belgium’s public prosecution service, at judicial district level, and release can’t happen until they’ve authorised it. Where a post-mortem is needed, it’s carried out at a university hospital forensic department, UZ Leuven, CHU Liege, UZ Gent, or ULB in Brussels, rather than at one central facility, which in practice spreads capacity fairly well across the country.
Getting home
Brussels Airport at Zaventem is the airport to use. Multiple carriers, Brussels Airlines, British Airways, and easyJet among them, fly direct to Heathrow and Gatwick, and cargo handling for human remains there is well established. Charleroi, Ryanair’s Brussels base, has more limited cargo capacity, and while Liege offers some connectivity, Brussels remains the better routing choice in nearly every case.
Read documents needed to repatriate a body to the UK for the wider document checklist. See the fuller detail at repatriation from Belgium to the UK.
Call Repatriate Service on +44 7703 577246 at any hour, or use the enquiry form below.