Conclusion

The institutional history of legal aid in Belgium is characterised by conti­nuity and change. When we examine the practical organisation of legal aid, we see primarily continuity.

In terms of change, we discovered three significant phenomena. First was how legal aid interacted with the rise of workplace accidents at the end of the nineteenth century. This sparked the 1889 reforms while simultane­ously allowing the jus pro Deo to play a pivotal role in the development of workplace accident case law. Second was the role played by the Wetswinkel in the 1970s, when progressive students challenged and contested the traditional delivery of legal aid bringing attention to the numerous flaws in the pro Deo system as organised by lawyers. This forced the legislature to intervene, resulting in lawyers being paid by the state. Finally, was the profound international influence of the ECHR, which turned legal aid from a favour into a constitutional right in 1994.

These two last phenomena caused a fundamental shift in the history of free legal assistance in Belgium: in the beginning, legal aid was an act of public charity, which lawyers rendered completely free (“pro Deo”). Today, the state pays lawyers for their services (“pro Pecunia”), as it had already earlier done for other occupations such as the notaries, bailiffs, and procu­rators. This has resulted in the harmonisation of the two historically divided systems of legal aid: free proceedings and free legal assistance, and a complete fusion can be expected in the near future.