Belgium’s federal government has until Thursday 1 October to implement measures that reduce the impact of aircraft noise on residents living under flight paths.
A February 2025 ruling by the French-speaking Court of First Instance in Brussels ordered the Belgian State to address excess aircraft noise around the Brussels Airport and to complete an environmental impact assessment. The government completed the assessment in June, but has yet to properly reduce the noise exposure of residents.
If the Belgian government doesn’t meet the requirements by Thursday, it will be fined €10,000 a day for up to 200 days. The federal government has already paid more than €40 million in penalty payments to the Brussels-Capital Region over the dispute.
Around 1,000 people gathered on Sunday 13 September 2026 at the entrance to Elisabeth Park in Koekelberg to protest the RNP 07L landing route. Credit: Belga/Mateusz Kukulka
The Belgian government has the difficult task of figuring out how to reduce aircraft noise without simply causing a nuisance to other communities, which would be the case were they to shift flight paths or change the wind criteria used to determine runway selection.
One flight procedure under particular scrutiny is RNP 07L, a satellite-guided approach used for aircraft landings at the Brussels Airport. Several local authorities have criticised this procedure, as it causes planes to fly over 450,000 residents despite the availability of different routes that would reportedly affect only one tenth of the people impacted.
Regardless of what the government does, it will have until 1 December to provide detailed reasons to justify its decision. If no solution is proposed, or if those decisions are not effective enough, the government could then face further legal challenges.
