Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, general meetings of co-owners were governed by Articles 577-6 to 577-14 of the former Civil Code.

The Act of 20 December 2020 containing various temporary and structural provisions relating to justice in the context of the fight against the spread of the COVID-19 coronavirus has introduced changes with regard to general meetings of co-owners. These measures can be found in chapters 19 and 20 of the law.

These included:

• The extension of the deadline for holding the general meeting.

Given the context of the pandemic and the containment, the general assemblies could be postponed to the following year (Article 54, paragraph 1^er of the law);

• The automatic renewal of mandates that are about to expire in the event of a postponement of the General Assembly.

The mandates of the trustees, the members of the condominium councils and the auditors have been extended by operation of law until the next general meeting (Article 54, paragraph 3 of the law);

• The relaxation of the unanimity requirement for the written procedure.

Before the pandemic, the written procedure could be used but required unanimous attendance and voting. During the pandemic, decisions taken through the written procedure could be taken on the basis of the "classic" attendance and voting quorums (Article 55 of the law).

However, these three measures are no longer in force.

The major innovation, which is still in force today, concerns the possibility of holding general meetings of co-owners remotely or in a hybrid formula (remote and face-to-face) (Article 58 of the law). Seeing that this last measure was effective, the legislator decided to enshrine this innovation in the new Civil Code, in article 3.87.

From now on, co-owners may participate in person or, if the notice of meeting so provides, remotely, in the general meeting of co-owners.

For more information, please contact Laurent Verbraken (laurent.verbraken@cew-law.be), Caroline Compagnon (caroline.compagnon@cew-law.be) and Eline De Mol (eline.demol@cew-law.be), lawyers, CEW & Partners.