Any legal or natural person authorized by the Ministry of the Interior carrying out or offering activities consisting in providing security services to third parties, on a permanent or occasional basis, or who makes himself known as such (Art2 of the law of 2 October 2017).

Guarding includes all kinds of surveillance and protection of property and people. It is subdivided into thirteen main categories:

1. static security of movable or immovable property
2. mobile security of movable or immovable property and intervention after alarm
3. surveillance and / or protection, in whole or in part on public roads, during the transport of goods;
   a) the transport, in whole or in part on the public highway, of money or goods determined by the King, other than money, which because of their precious nature or their specific nature, are subject to threats;
   b) the management of a money counting center;
   c) the provision of cash machines, surveillance during activities on these cash machines and unsupervised activities on cash machines placed outside occupied offices, if access to banknotes or silver cassettes is possible;
4. the management of an alarm center;
5. the protection of people;
6. store inspection;
7. any form of static guarding of property, public surveillance and control with a view to ensuring the safe and smooth running of events, hereinafter referred to as “guarding of events”;
8. any form of static guarding, control and public surveillance in places belonging to the outing area, hereinafter referred to as “outing area security”;
9. the search of movable or immovable property for the purpose of detecting spy devices, weapons, narcotics, explosive substances, substances which can be used for the preparation of explosive substances or other dangerous objects;
10. making findings relating exclusively to the immediately perceptible situation of goods in the public domain, on the order of the competent authority or the holder of a public concession;
11. accompanying groups of people for road safety;
12. the ordering of technical means determined by the King which are made available to third parties in order to ensure security;
13. surveillance and control of people in the context of maintaining security in places accessible or not to the public, which is not provided for in 6 °, 7 ° or 8 °. Art. 4.

This security can be organized in four forms: the security company, the internal security service, volunteers and employees of concessionaires. All this is regulated in the law of October 2, 2017, also called the “law on private and special security” or simply the “law”. There are other forms of guarding outside this framework. These are regulated in other legislations. This is among others the case of municipal guards. We will not dwell here on these forms of guarding.

Source IBZ: https://vigilis.ibz.be/Pages/main.aspx?Culture=fr&pageid=bewaking/burger/watis/introductie

Any company or internal security service wishing to organize security activities must first obtain authorization from the Minister of the Interior. The same goes for a company which, if it does not carry out security activities, makes itself known as such.
The authorization is granted for a period of five years and can be renewed thereafter for periods of the same duration. The applicant must meet a number of authorization conditions. Authorization is granted for one or more kinds of guarding activities and according to a specific authorization procedure.
When granting authorization, the Minister of the Interior may exclude certain activities or the use of certain means and methods. It may also make the authorization subject to specific conditions. Authorization may be granted under suspensive or resolving conditions. In the first case, the authorization is only issued after a certain condition has been met; in the second case, it is automatically resolved if a certain condition is not met.

can end in four ways:
– because the company or the internal security service to which or to which an authorization has been granted under resolving condition does not respect the imposed condition;
– because the authorization expires and the company does not request a renewal at the end of the period of validity of the authorization;
– because the holder of the authorization himself requests the voluntary withdrawal of his authorization from the Minister of the Interior;
– because the Minister of the Interior withdraws the authorization as a sanction.

The authorization relates to the right to engage in guarding activities or to make oneself known as such. The authorization therefore does not expire because a company ceases to carry on its activities.

In some cases, a company may temporarily use the authorization of another company. It is a business that merges with an authorized business, takes over an authorized business, or an authorized business with changed legal personality. In these cases, the new legal entity may continue the guarding activities of the company initially benefiting from the authorization during the period preceding the notification of the decision relating to the authorization request.

All deeds, invoices, announcements, publications, letters, order notes, website and other documents, whether electronic or not, which are paid by a company or an internal service must mention the authorization for donations company or internal service.

Source IBZ: https://vigilis.ibz.be/pages/abcdef.aspx?PageId=bewaking/burger/trefwoorden&Culture=fr&keyword=autorisation&searchkeyword=