Belgium
Profile written September 2026 · figures updated nightly
Where things stand
The latest published reading for each measure, with the last five years beside it.
the ECB's rate, which Belgium has shared since 1999
01Structure
Belgium hosts Europe's largest integrated chemical cluster, and the world's second: the port of Antwerp-Bruges, where several of the world's largest chemical producers run major plants side by side and feed one another through shared pipelines and storage.1 Chemicals and plastics generate a turnover in the order of seventy-four billion euros a year, more than two thirds of it in Flanders,2 and pharmaceuticals — vaccines and biologics in particular — are the other industrial peak.
The national figures average two very different regional economies. Flanders produces close to three fifths of Belgian output and Wallonia under a quarter; Walloon output per head was around seventy-two per cent of the national average in 2022, the result of a deindustrialisation of coal and steel that began in the 1960s and was never fully replaced.3
02Trade and exposure
Exports amount to three quarters of GDP, and much of that flows through Antwerp-Bruges, one of Europe's two largest ports. The composition is dominated by chemicals, pharmaceuticals, vehicles and refined products, and the main markets are Belgium's neighbours — Germany, France and the Netherlands — which makes Belgian activity a direct function of the core euro-area economies.
The chemical cluster also makes Belgian exports unusually sensitive to energy prices, because many of its processes use gas both as fuel and as feedstock.
03Energy and resources
Belgium imports three quarters of the energy it uses. Nuclear power has long supplied a large share of its electricity, and the planned phase-out has been partly reversed: two reactors, Doel 4 and Tihange 3, were extended to 2035 under a deal finalised in March 2025 that splits their ownership equally between the Belgian state and Engie and transfers future waste liabilities to the state.4
The older reactors have been closing on the original timetable, which leaves the country more reliant on gas and imports for power in the second half of the decade than the extension alone suggests.
04Labour and demography
Only around seventy-three per cent of 20- to 64-year-olds are in work, one of the lower employment rates in north-western Europe, and youth unemployment runs near nineteen per cent. Both are averages across the regional divide in section 01: employment in Flanders is far closer to Dutch levels than Wallonia's or Brussels's.
The distinctive institution is the automatic indexation of wages, pensions and benefits to the cost of living, which protects purchasing power in an inflation shock and passes it into labour costs at the same time.5 Under the 2025 budget agreement, the January 2026 and January 2028 indexations apply only to the part of a salary up to €4,000 a month — the first deliberate limit on the mechanism in years.
05Public finances
Belgian public debt is above a hundred per cent of GDP, among the four highest ratios in the European Union, and structurally high deficits are expected to push it higher over the coming years.6 Automatic indexation of benefits means that inflation raises spending quickly, while the federal structure divides fiscal responsibility between the federal government and the regions and communities, which complicates any consolidation.
Research and development spending, at over three per cent of GDP, is among the highest in Europe — much of it by the pharmaceutical and chemical industries rather than the state.
06Money and prices
Belgium has set no policy rate of its own since 1999; the rate shown above is the European Central Bank's. With indexation passing inflation into wages within months, a gap between Belgian and euro-area inflation shows up in Belgian competitiveness faster than in members without such a mechanism.
A debt ratio above a hundred per cent also makes the spread over German bonds a material channel of monetary policy for Belgium, as it is for France and Italy.
07What the models expect
These are computed on this site from each series' own history, and are nobody's official projection. The bar is the range the figure lands in half the time; the dot is the central path.
Replayed from past origins on today's revised figures, the same baseline was usually off by 1.09 on consumer price inflation, 1.82 on real gdp, 0.22 on unemployment rate, 0.60 on central bank policy rate, 3.58 on government debt.
08Structural indicators
The figures behind the sections above. They move by a point or two a year, so each carries the year it was measured.
| Measure | Value | Year | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| Industry, share of gross value added | 12.3% | 2025 | Eurostat |
| Exports, share of GDP | 75.5% | 2025 | Eurostat |
| Energy import dependency | 75.4% | 2024 | Eurostat |
| R&D spending, share of GDP | 3.4% | 2024 | Eurostat |
| Employment rate, ages 20–64 | 72.8% | 2025 | Eurostat |
| Youth unemployment rate | 18.9% | Jun 2026 | Eurostat |
| Government deficit | −5.2% | 2025 | Eurostat |
| Flanders, share of national output | ~58% | 2022 | KBC / NBB |
09Sources and method
Live figures: Eurostat, Bank for International Settlements. Each is fetched nightly and validated before publication; the delivery report on /status/ says how old every one of them is. Profile written 2026-09-11, next review September 2027.
- The Antwerp-Bruges chemical cluster — Port of Antwerp-Bruges, chemicals
- Chemical and plastics turnover — Cefic, Belgium
- The regional divide between Flanders and Wallonia — KBC, regional economic growth in Belgium; LSE Economic History blog
- The Doel 4 and Tihange 3 extension — Nuclear Engineering International
- Automatic indexation and the 2026 and 2028 limits — DLA Piper, 2026
- Debt level and projected path — European Commission, forecast for Belgium