Data on businesses in Belgium and the EU

Official business statistics

• Businesses by province and regionEstablishment units and inhabitants per province, VAT-registered businesses, start-ups and closures per region, next to our own counts.
• Business start-ups and closuresEnterprise births and deaths 2021–2023 and VAT registrations and deregistrations 2024 by NACE section.
• Businesses in the EU member states 2024Number of businesses in all 27 member states, Belgium’s share and businesses per 1,000 inhabitants.

Where the figures come from

The pages use official figures: for Belgium from Statbel, the Belgian statistical office, via its database be.STAT (business demography, VAT-registered businesses by region, establishment units by municipality), and for the population and the EU comparison from Eurostat. We retrieved the tables ourselves on 4 November 2026 and used them unrounded; our own values are only simple calculations from them (shares, rates, values per 1,000 inhabitants).

These are not figures from our dataset. They describe how many businesses exist, not how many of them would be included in an export from basedecontacts.be or have a phone number. Where a page shows our own counts next to them for orientation, they are marked as such. The status of our database is shown on the database status page; we state the scope of a specific selection in the quote.

What applies to all analyses

• Different counts, different scopes. Eurostat’s structural business statistics count enterprises in NACE sections B to S excluding public administration (O) and membership organisations (S94): 931,405 in 2024. Statbel’s VAT statistics count all VAT-registered businesses, including the self-employed and agriculture: 1,187,819 active in 2024. Neither figure can be added to the other.
• Businesses and establishment units. A business can have several establishment units (shops, branches, offices). For the fourth quarter of 2024 Statbel counted 1,429,763 establishment units; each page states what is counted.
• Registered office or location. The VAT statistics assign a business to the region of its registered office, the establishment units are counted where they are located. A business based in Brussels with branches in Flanders therefore appears in different places.
• We do not interpret causes. The tables show levels and differences. Why a province or an industry performs differently cannot be read from them alone.

Using the figures

You may reuse the figures with attribution. Please cite the official source (Statbel or Eurostat) with table and data status; each page contains a citation template. If you need a figure for a particular industry or region that is missing here, write to info@basedecontacts.be.