be-eli-mcp
An MCP server for Belgian legislation via [Moniteur Belge / Belgisch Staatsblad]
(https://www.ejustice.just.fgov.be), the official gazette of the Belgian Federal Public Service
Justice. It fetches act metadata and full text by ELI coordinates, with verifiable citations.
Part of the eu-legal-mcp line of national legal connectors by MateMatic.
Belgian legislation is addressed by ELI coordinates - type / year / month / day / numac
(the Belgian legislative numbering system) - at
https://www.ejustice.just.fgov.be/eli/{type}/{yyyy}/{mm}/{dd}/{numac}/justel. Every response
carries a native eli_uri, a human_readable_citation and a source_url.
Read-only. The server only queries ejustice.just.fgov.be and writes a local audit log. It
never modifies official text.
Belgium is trilingual (French / Dutch / German). human_readable_citation defaults to the
French form by LDH convention; use be_get_text(language=...) for Dutch (Belgisch Staatsblad)
or German. See CONSTITUTION.md Art. 4 for the full caveat.
| Tool | What it does |
|---|
be_get_act(doc_type, year, month, day, numac) | Metadata for an act by its ELI coordinates. doc_type is one of loi, decret, ordonnance, arrete, constitution. Returns the native eli_uri, title, source authority, publication date, entry-into-force date, table of contents, and the citation contract. |
be_get_text(doc_type, year, month, day, numac, language="fr") | The verbatim consolidated text ("Texte"/"Tekst" section) in fr (default), nl or de. |
be_list_year(doc_type, year) | Browse a year's listing for one doc_type, to discover NUMAC coordinates. Titles in this listing are best-effort (may be None); call be_get_act for the authoritative title. |
be_coverage() | Declare what this connector covers, when each family was captured, and - explicitly - what it does NOT cover. Every gap carries a fallback. |
There is no free-text search: ejustice.just.fgov.be exposes no keyword-search API. Discover
acts by ELI coordinates (from a citation you already hold) or by browsing be_list_year.
Configuration
ejustice.just.fgov.be is keyless. Configuration is optional:
| Variable | Meaning |
|---|
BE_ELI_BASE_URL | ejustice host (default https://www.ejustice.just.fgov.be). |
BE_ELI_CACHE_DIR | Disk cache dir (default ~/.matematic/cache/be-eli). |
BE_ELI_AUDIT_DIR | Audit log dir (default ~/.matematic/audit). |
Copy .mcp.json.example to your MCP client config.
Install
py -3.13 -m venv .venv
.\.venv\Scripts\python.exe -m pip install -e ".[dev]"
Windows 11 with Smart App Control
Smart App Control blocks unsigned executables, which covers uvx.exe, pip.exe
and the be-eli-mcp.exe launcher that pip writes at install time. The python.exe and
py.exe from the python.org installer are signed by the Python Software
Foundation, so running the module through the interpreter works:
python -m pip install be-eli-mcp
python -m be_eli_mcp
pip.exe is blocked for the same reason, so install with python -m pip, not
pip install. If python is not on PATH, use the Windows launcher: py -3 -m be_eli_mcp.
{ "mcpServers": { "be-eli-mcp": { "command": "python", "args": ["-m", "be_eli_mcp"] } } }
Do not turn Smart App Control off to work around this - it cannot be re-enabled
without reinstalling Windows.
Tests
pytest tests/test_instructions_drift.py tests/test_parse.py
pytest tests/test_smoke.py -v
Licence
Apache-2.0. Moniteur Belge / Belgisch Staatsblad content is © the Belgian federal state; this
software only retrieves and cites it. See CONSTITUTION.md Art. 1 for a note on the licence status
of the source data (widely described as CC0 by third-party catalogs; not independently
re-verified against ejustice.just.fgov.be's own terms page in this project).