Arriving in Belgium at 15 in 1974, this Moroccan man without a residence permit gets the CPAS convicted

Born in 1959, the Moroccan man joined his father and two brothers in Belgium in 1974. He worked there for several years before his situation deteriorated. After losing his job and then spending long periods on the streets, he was removed from the national register in 2009.

Despite this removal, nothing in the file shows that he returned to live in Morocco. The Moroccan consulate found no record of his departure for his country of origin, and several associations attest to his presence in Belgium.

His case echoes that of a Moroccan man who had been in Belgium for more than 17 years and whom the administration asked to return to Morocco for a simple “formality”.

Since March 2023, the man has been hospitalized in Brussels. His condition requires significant care, but his continued stay in hospital is no longer medically justified. The problem lies elsewhere: without suitable accommodation, leaving the hospital would mean returning to the streets.

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His administrator then asked the Brussels CPAS to fund a nursing home or a facility capable of accommodating him. On July 10, 2023, the CPAS refused, notably because the man was staying unlawfully in Belgium and had no residence permit.

The residence issue is nevertheless central in several recent legal disputes: another Moroccan man had obtained the annulment of the refusal of his residence application on medical grounds and of the accompanying order to leave the country.

The CPAS must find a place and pay

The Labour Court had already annulled the CPAS decision in February 2024 and recognized that the Moroccan man was absolutely unable to return to Morocco as long as he was hospitalized or receiving care in a specialized facility. The CPAS did not challenge this part of the judgment.

The Brussels Labour Court went further in its ruling of August 26, 2025. It found that an accommodation solution had become urgent: the hospital was keeping the Moroccan man even though his stay there was no longer medically necessary, because there was no alternative that would prevent him from ending up on the streets.

It therefore ordered the CPAS to seek, together with Saint-Jean Clinic, a nursing home, a psychiatric care home or any other suitable facility. The CPAS must also cover the accommodation costs, as well as the related medical and pharmaceutical expenses.

The Court, however, rejected the claim for 82.31 euros per day, as the amount had not been sufficiently substantiated. If no place is found before the hospital discharge, the CPAS must pay the Moroccan man social assistance equivalent to the integration income at the single-person rate.

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The case shows how far the CPAS’s duty to provide assistance can extend, even though residence conditions can normally have direct consequences for the payment of social assistance in Belgium.

More than fifty years after arriving in Belgium, the Moroccan man still has no residence permit. But the CPAS can no longer simply invoke his administrative situation: justice now requires it to fund a concrete solution to prevent his return to the streets.