The European Commission (EC) has deemed that Belgium's public guarantee for nuclear operators that do not find adequate civil liability coverage on private insurance market does not involve state aid and does not infringe the European market free competition principle. Besides, the EC concluded that this regulation only aims at improving the compensation of victims in the case of an accident and does not grant any economic advantage to the domestic nuclear operators.
In December 2016, Belgium adopted a law to improve the compensation measures for the potential victims of a nuclear accident. The purpose of this regulation was to comply with the amended "Paris Convention on nuclear third party liability". In general, nuclear operators are obliged to secure financially their liability towards victims, most of them heading towards the private insurance market. However, some nuclear damages insured by the amended Paris Convention are not covered by the nuclear insurance market. As a result, the Belgian government set up the state guarantee scheme in order to cope with the nuclear damages that cannot be covered by private insurances.
As of today, the Belgian legislation provides that the responsible nuclear operator will have to compensate the victims of a nuclear accident up to €1.2bn for up to 30 years after it occurred. The compensation covers personal injury and property damage as well as environmental damage and economic losses.
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