Constitutional Court: criminal appeal period cannot run without information on remedies

On 22 October 2026 the Constitutional Court delivered judgment no. 125/2026, holding that Articles 172 and 203 of the Code of Criminal Procedure breach the constitutional principle of equality, read together with Article 6 of the European Convention on Human Rights. The problem is simple to state: the 30-day period to appeal a criminal judgment starts to run on the day it is pronounced, even if nobody has told the convicted person that an appeal is possible, how to lodge it, or by when. The judgment confirms and extends judgment no. 176/2025 of 18 December 2025, and it leaves the legislature with a firm deadline: the current rules survive only until 31 December 2026 at the latest.

The judgment

The case reached the Court through preliminary questions from the Court of First Instance of Liège (Liège division). A person convicted by the Liège police court in a judgment delivered after adversarial proceedings (op tegenspraak) had lodged an appeal after the 30-day period had expired. The referring court asked whether the starting point of that period was compatible with Articles 10 and 11 of the Constitution, read with Article 6 ECHR and the general principles on access to a court, given that criminal defendants receive no information on remedies, whereas parties in civil proceedings do.

The second question, on the civil-law information sheet in Articles 780/1 and 792 of the Judicial Code, needed no answer, nor did the others insofar as they concerned Article 792. The core of the ruling lies in points 3 and 4 of the dictum. Articles 172 and 203 of the Code of Criminal Procedure violate Articles 10 and 11 of the Constitution, read with Article 6 ECHR, "only insofar" as they cause the appeal period to run from pronouncement even when the convicted person has not been informed of the possibility to appeal, nor of the manner and time limit for doing so. Separately, the absence of a statutory provision determining how that information must be given is itself unconstitutional. Finally, the effects of both articles are maintained until the legislature adopts a remedy, and at the latest until 31 December 2026.

The reasoning is largely taken from judgment no. 176/2025; the Council of Ministers itself accepted that the earlier judgment implied the unconstitutionality of the provisions under review.

Legal framework

Appeal periods in criminal matters

Under Article 203, § 1, of the Code of Criminal Procedure, the right to appeal lapses if the declaration of appeal is not made at the registry of the court that gave the judgment within thirty days of its pronouncement; for judgments by default, the period runs from service on the convicted party. Article 174 applies the same periods to appeals against police court judgments, and Article 172 provides that the period runs from the day of pronouncement, or from service for a default judgment. For an adversarial judgment, pronouncement alone triggers the period. In civil matters the position is different, as the appeal period of one month in principle runs from service of the judgment.

The duty to inform in civil cases

The current case law has its roots in judgment no. 23/2022 of 10 February 2022, in which the Court found Article 43 of the Judicial Code unconstitutional because the service of a judicial decision did not have to mention the available remedies, the time limits and the competent court. The legislature responded with the Act of 26 December 2022 on the mention of remedies. It introduced an information sheet (Article 780/1 of the Judicial Code) listing the remedies, the competent court, the manner and time limit for lodging an appeal and the act that triggers the period. Under Article 47bis of the Judicial Code, the period does not start to run if the sheet is missing or contains an error or omission that could have misled a party acting in good faith.

That reform deliberately stopped at the border of criminal procedure. As judgment no. 176/2025 recalls, the preparatory works (Parl.St. Kamer 2022-23, DOC 55-3046/001) took the view that the 2022 judgments only required information where service or notification starts the time limit, that criminal procedure already contained a partial information system, and that in adversarial criminal proceedings the period runs from pronouncement, an act "not targeted" by the Court's judgments. A circular of the Board of Procurators General (COL 5/2008) likewise stated that judgment no. 23/2022 could not be applied without qualification in criminal procedure.

The Strasbourg standard

Both judgments rest on the right of access to a court under Article 6 ECHR. Time limits may restrict that right only if they pursue a legitimate aim, are proportionate and leave its essence intact; the Court refers to L'Érablière A.S.B.L. v. Belgium (2009), Miessen v. Belgium (2016) and Ronald Vermeulen v. Belgium (2018). On the specific question of information about remedies, it relies, through judgment no. 23/2022, on the Strasbourg line of cases including Da Luz Domingues Ferreira, Hakimi, Faniel and Assunção Chaves. As Van der Speeten observed in 2022, the Court thereby generalised case law that arose in specific contexts, such as default proceedings, into a general duty to inform.

Analysis

Not the time limit, but the silence

It is important to see what the Court did not decide. In judgment no. 176/2025 it recalled its judgment no. 155/2015 of 29 October 2015, which upheld the then 15-day appeal period, and held that the fact that the period starts at pronouncement, without any need for service, "does not as such" disproportionately restrict access to a court. Neither the 30-day period nor its starting point is therefore unconstitutional in itself. What is unconstitutional is the combination of a short, automatically running period with the absence of any information. In the Court's words (B.11.1), the fact that a contested criminal judgment need not be served for the period to start "does not alter the fact that the right to a fair trial also requires, in such a situation, that the possibilities and time limits for lodging remedies be brought to his attention as explicitly as possible".

This is a calibrated outcome. The Court did not move the starting point to service, which would have disrupted the logic of criminal procedure. It located the defect in the lack of information and, partly, in a legislative omission: the gap, rather than the text, offends the Constitution, and only the legislature can fill it.

Equality as the vehicle

Formally, the review runs through Articles 10 and 11 of the Constitution. The Court accepts that different procedural regimes for civil and criminal matters do not in themselves amount to discrimination; a difference becomes discriminatory only if it disproportionately restricts access to a court. In substance, therefore, the decisive standard is Article 6 ECHR, applied through the equality principle, as is common in the Court's case law. The Council of Ministers had argued in the Liège case that the civil-criminal difference is explained by the different nature of the two procedures.

Maintaining the effects

The most practically significant element is the maintenance of effects. Using its power to temper the consequences of a finding of unconstitutionality, the Court kept Articles 172 and 203 in force "to safeguard legal certainty and to give the legislature the time needed" to regulate the information on remedies. Without it, the finality of a large number of criminal judgments could have been called into question. The technique is familiar to readers of this blog from our earlier discussion of the Court's use of maintenance measures in the Doel 1 and 2 case.

The price of that approach is an explicit deadline. Judgment no. 125/2026 maintains the effects until the legislature acts "and at the latest until 31 December 2026", the same date set in December 2025. That the Court repeated the formula ten months later suggests that, when it ruled, the remedial rule had not yet been adopted. A practitioner's commentary published the day after the judgment accordingly advises defendants not to wait for a change in the law.

What the legislature must decide

The Court does not prescribe a model, but the civil reform offers one: information given at pronouncement or by the registry, a criminal equivalent of the information sheet, or a rule that the period does not start until the information has been given. Each option raises questions, for instance how to inform a defendant who is absent at pronouncement although the judgment is adversarial, and what follows from incomplete information. Judgment no. 176/2025 also noted that the Court of Cassation already requires, for opposition against default judgments, that the accused be clearly informed (Cass. 14 May 2024).

Conclusion

Judgment no. 125/2026 is not a revolution but a confirmation with a deadline. The Constitutional Court has now held twice that a criminal appeal period may not start to run while the convicted person is left in the dark about the remedy, and it has extended that finding to Article 172 of the Code of Criminal Procedure. It also illustrates how the Court uses Articles 10 and 11 of the Constitution as a gateway for Article 6 ECHR (for earlier developments in its case law, see our review of the year 2015). What to watch next is the legislature: the maintained effects expire on 31 December 2026, and a rule on how convicted persons must be informed has to be in place by then.

Sources

1. GwH 22 oktober 2026, nr. 125/2026 (Const. Court 22 October 2026, no. 125/2026)
2. GwH 18 december 2025, nr. 176/2025 (Const. Court 18 December 2025, no. 176/2025)
3. Constitutional Court, judgments 2026 (overview)
4. Rechtskundig Weekblad, snelbericht on judgment no. 176/2025
5. K. Van der Speeten, "Informatie over rechtsmiddelen en het recht op toegang tot de rechter", Tijd voor Mensenrechten, 29 May 2022
6. B. Bleyaert, "Hoger beroep politierechtbank: informatie over hoger beroep verplicht", 23 October 2026
7. Elfri, "Hoger beroep en verzet in strafzaken en hun termijnen"