Leveraging Artificial Intelligence as a Decision Support System in Belgian Commercial Courts

Abstract

In Belgium, each commercial court has at least one Chamber for Companies in Difficulties (CCD), tasked with the early detection and investigation of financially distressed companies. While the CCD’s primary objective is to promote recovery by encouraging financially distressed companies to take action, it also has a regulatory function by facilitating the orderly removal of companies that lack the willingness or capacity to recover. To identify companies, CCDs rely on a database of red flags. Based on these red flags, CCDs can decide to open files, investigate companies, and act accordingly. Given the economic stakes and the resource-intensive nature of the current manual process, we are working on a pilot project at the CCD of Antwerp to develop an AI-based judicial decision support system to assist CCD judges in selecting and prioritizing cases.