Lawyers have filed a complaint against Belgium, accusing it of failing to protect its citizens from serious health risks posed by chemicals.
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ClientEarth has filed a human rights complaint with the European Committee for Social Rights (ECSR). Belgium has the highest levels of Permanent Chemical Substances (PFAS) of any European country.
“We realized that not only has the pollution been present for a long time, but that authorities have had information about this pollution for years, if not decades, and very little is being done,” says Hélène Dugui, an environmental lawyer at Client Earth.
NGO ClientEarth has extensive experience in bringing legal proceedings against governments and corporations regarding environmental issues. This is the first time he has mentioned the ECSR, the Council of Europe’s watchdog that determines whether member states respect the European Social Charter. “We chose this commission because we know that it has very strong coercive powers,” Dugie told Euronews Earth.
Belgium: Europe’s major PFAS hotspot
PFAS, also known as forever chemicals, are a group of more than 10,000 man-made chemicals widely used in industry for their water-, stain-, and oil-resistant properties. It’s also used in pizza boxes, nonstick pots, menstrual napkins, and outdoor clothing.
They are associated with multiple health risks, including certain types of cancer, metabolic diseases, and fertility problems.
Belgium has the highest levels of PFAS contamination in Europe, according to the Forever Pollution Project, which collects data and maps PFAS contamination across the continent.
The main sites in Belgium affected by PFAS contamination include the town of Zwindrecht near Antwerp, which was heavily affected due to its proximity to the multinational 3M factory, and Sievres, near the French border, where the contamination is linked to a nearby air force base. The map also shows that Brussels is highly affected by PFAS pollution, especially in the areas around Anderlecht and Uccle.
ClientEarth’s complaint builds on examples like Zwijndrecht, where public authorities knew about PFAS issues years before the scandal broke in 2021.
Flemish government officials, including then-Mayor of Antwerp and now Belgian Prime Minister Bart de Weber, were informed of the contamination as early as 2017, but took no action.
As far back as the early 2000s, 3M and Flemish government agencies had been discussing PFAS contamination in areas near the plant, but underestimated the extent of the problem.
What are the health risks of permanent chemicals?
PFAS have been linked to several health conditions. In 2023, the World Health Organization classified perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA) as carcinogenic to humans and perfluorooctane sulfonic acid (PFOS) as possibly carcinogenic to humans.
Although these two PFAS are banned in the EU, they still exist in soil, water, and people’s blood in many contaminated areas across Europe because they take hundreds of years to break down.
Cancer is not the only health hazard associated with PFAS. “These compounds are associated with various metabolic diseases such as diabetes, reduced fertility and obesity,” Philippe Grandjean, professor of environmental medicine at the National Institute of Public Health in Copenhagen, told Euronews Earth.
Grandjean emphasized that PFAS pose a risk not only to adults currently exposed, but also to future generations.
“PFAS can affect the father’s semen health, or semen quality, and PFAS can increase the risk of infertility and involuntary abortion,” he explained. “PFAS cross the placenta, so the mother shares the burden of PFAS with the fetus. And third, PFAS are excreted in breast milk,” he added.
All of these health risks should therefore be important drivers for governments to invest in prevention, according to Grandjean.
How did chemicals forever become a human rights issue?
This is not the first time that PFAS contamination has been linked to human rights violations. In 2024, UN experts called PFAS contamination by DuPont and Chemours in North Carolina a human rights issue.
Legal action regarding PFAS contamination is underway across Europe, with environmental NGOs and residents suing France for failing to address PFAS contamination in May 2026, with a verdict expected in 2027.
“We really want allegations that support and complement these (European) actions,” Dugie explains.
“PFAS is not only an environmental problem, but also a very human problem, and governments and public institutions have an obligation to protect those rights,” she continued.
ClientEarth said in a press release that the ECSR is expected to decide whether to accept the complaint in 2027, and a final decision is expected to take two to three years.
With this complaint, ClientEarth hopes to bring about concrete changes to Belgium’s PFAS regulations.
Specifically, it wants Belgium to permanently ban all chemicals and provide solutions to affected communities. “These measures are, for example, to ensure systemic biomonitoring of people, especially vulnerable groups such as children and pregnant women. But we have also started remediation and decontamination, which is still very slow in Belgium,” Dugie told Euronews Earth.
However, cleaning up PFAS contamination is incredibly complex. Even if Europe invested 100 billion euros a year in remediation, it would only be a small fraction of the chemicals that would be forever removed from the environment, according to a study published Monday (July 6) in the journal Environmental Science: Processes and Impacts.
