Belgium, experimentation
BRUGEL derogation framework for innovative energy projects (projets innovants)
BRUGEL, the Brussels-Capital energy regulator, granted derogations from market and tariff rules to energy-sharing pilot projects under article 90 of the Brussels electricity ordinance as amended on 23 July 2018, and states that six such pilot projects started from 2020 until the derogation framework ended when the ordinance of 17 March 2022 entered into force.
6 pilot projects, energy-sharing pilot projects that started under the derogation framework, 2020-2022. BRUGEL (Commission de régulation de l'énergie en Région de Bruxelles-Capitale), Projet d'étude BRUGEL-Etude-20230425-45, Coûts-avantages relative aux communautés d'énergie et au partage d'électricité, retrieved 2026-10-16.
The move, and what it needed
The regional energy regulator used a statutory derogation clause to let named energy-sharing projects operate outside market and tariff rules for a limited time and area, studied the results with the grid operator, and the regional parliament then wrote energy sharing into ordinary law.
Preconditions
- A statute that lets the regulator set specific market and tariff rules for delimited pilot zones
- A distribution system operator able to install smart meters and bill local volumes separately
- An EU directive that was going to require a permanent energy-sharing regime, which gave the pilots a rule to inform
Where else it has been used: Flanders recognised Thor Park in Genk as a regulatory-free zone for energy in 2020, and Wallonia's regulator authorises pilot projects under its own decree; the three Belgian regions run separate regimes for the same purpose.
Limits: The count is of pilot projects, not of firms: the participants are energy communities, a business incubator, a social housing building and co-ownership associations, with the distribution system operator Sibelga metering each one. The regulator reports on its own programme. The number is read from a PDF: the regulator's cover note (page 4) says six projects started, while the consultant's annex in the same file (page 21) describes five, so the figure is uncertain by one. The study is a consultation draft dated 25 April 2023. Six projects in about two years in a region of about 1.2 million people is a small flow, and the framework covered energy sharing and the connection of decentralised production only. The derogations ran for two years, some with an extension, and the source does not say how each project exited. The framework ended because the 2022 ordinance transposed the EU directives and put energy sharing into ordinary rules, so its end is a rule change and not a documented failure. It covers one region: the Flemish regulatory-free zone for energy (Thor Park, recognised 2020) and the Walloon pilot projects under article 27 of the electricity decree are separate regimes that this number does not include.
This record describes what Belgium delivered. It is linked to Firms through regulatory sandboxes because no comparable dataset measures that capability. It does not affect the score or confidence.
More from Belgium
6 other deliveries from this country.
Belgium's Federal Planning Bureau, which produces the government's economic forecasts and long-term demographic, ageing, energy and transport outlooks, published 34 publications in 2025 and employed 91 full-time equivalents at the end of the year, down from 96 at the end of 2023, after it stopped replacing departing staff in 2024 to meet savings targets.
Chômage temporaire corona, 2020
Belgium's National Employment Office treated every COVID-19 work stoppage as temporary unemployment for force majeure and paid allowances to 939,532 workers for March 2020 and 1,117,133 for April, when 1,221,412 workers, 35.3 percent of private and contractual employees, were declared temporarily unemployed; almost 1.4 million received at least one payment during 2020.
De Kade prison in Antwerp, a federal DBFM contract
Belgium's federal Buildings Agency had the new 440-place prison de Kade in Antwerp, part of the federal prisons masterplan, designed, built and financed by the consortium Hortus Conclusus under a DBFM contract, with works from 2023 to 2026 at a construction cost of EUR 195.5 million and an annual availability fee of EUR 23.1 million for 25 years of maintenance, after which the prison returns to the federal state free of charge.
Federal strategic stock of protective masks, and its dismantling
The Federal Public Service Public Health held a strategic stock of masks for pandemic influenza in military warehouses in Namur from 2006, sized at 32 million surgical masks when the Bioethics Committee reviewed the pandemic plan in 2009. It destroyed the expired masks in operations in late 2015 and late 2018 without replacing them, so Belgium entered the COVID-19 crisis in early 2020 with no strategic mask stock.
The National Crisis Centre of the Federal Public Service Interior has run BE-Alert, the national system that lets municipalities and provinces alert the population by SMS, including location-based SMS, and information screens, since 2017. By 1 September 2025, 537 of 565 municipalities, covering 95 percent of Belgian territory, were affiliated, 1,369,659 citizen addresses were registered, and the system had been used 273 times in 2025.
Brussels regional express rail network (GEN/RER) infrastructure works, and their stall
Belgium's federal state and three regions agreed in 2001 to fund the infrastructure for a regional express rail network around Brussels through the RER Fund, with every work due by the end of 2012. The Court of Audit told the Chamber in February 2017 that the cost of the works charged to the fund had risen by more than 27 percent over 2001 to 2016, that all but one project ran six to 17.5 years late, that the works were largely at a standstill and that full four-tracking of lines 124 and 161 had been postponed with no date.
The same indicator elsewhere
51 deliveries linked to Firms through regulatory sandboxes in other countries.
The United Kingdom's financial regulator built the first regulatory sandbox in 2016, and by the end of 2022 had accepted 168 firms and products to test with real customers under supervision.
Korean regulatory-sandbox system across eight sectors
South Korea expanded its regulatory-sandbox system from ICT and industrial-convergence fields in January 2019 to eight sectoral regimes by 2024, adding finance, regulatory-free zones, smart cities, R&D zones, mobility and circular economy testing.
MAS FinTech Regulatory Sandbox variants
Singapore's Monetary Authority operates three FinTech Regulatory Sandbox variants—Sandbox, Sandbox Express and Sandbox Plus—giving firms distinct routes to test regulated products with real customers under defined safeguards.
Rede Nacional de Test Beds for company experimentation
ANI's National Innovation Report records 47 recognised Portuguese test beds and €150 million allocated to the national network for developing and testing new products and services at technology-readiness levels 5 to 9.
Zonas Livres Tecnológicas, regulator-supervised experimentation zones
ANI's National Innovation Report records four Portuguese Zonas Livres Tecnológicas (technological free zones) by the end of 2024, where innovators can test technology-based processes in real or near-real environments under continuous regulator supervision.
Banco Central regulatory sandbox, first cycle
Brazil's central bank opened its regulatory sandbox to applications in February 2021, received 52 projects, admitted seven to test under relaxed rules from 6 December 2021, and ran the cycle for one year with one permitted extension.
Reserve Bank of India regulatory sandbox
The Reserve Bank of India ran four themed sandbox cohorts between 2020 and 2024, retail payments, cross-border payments, MSME lending and fraud prevention, admitting 28 entities to test and finding 13 products viable in the three cohorts whose exits it published, and keeps the cohorts open on tap.
Capital Markets Authority regulatory sandbox
Kenya's Capital Markets Authority opened a regulatory sandbox under a 2019 policy guidance note and by January 2024 had let 11 firms exit it after live testing, with new admissions continuing into January 2025.
SEC Nigeria Regulatory Incubation Program
Nigeria's Securities and Exchange Commission opened a one-year Regulatory Incubation sandbox in September 2023 and had admitted seven firms across cohorts 001/23 and 002/24 to test capital-market products, then cleared seven more entities into its Accelerated Regulatory Incubation Programme in July 2026.
ADGM RegLab, the first fintech sandbox in the region
The Financial Services Regulatory Authority of Abu Dhabi Global Market opened its RegLab fintech sandbox to applications on 2 November 2016 and by August 2019 had admitted 32 firms from 83 applications from 20 countries, of which two had graduated to the live market.
OJK regulatory sandbox for financial-sector technological innovation
Indonesia's Financial Services Authority (OJK), running a regulatory sandbox since 2018 and under POJK 3/2024 since February 2024, had received 26 applications and approved 9 sandbox participants by December 2025, four of which had completed testing and been declared passed.
Bank Negara Malaysia Fintech Regulatory Sandbox
Bank Negara Malaysia has operated a fintech regulatory sandbox since October 2016 and added an accelerated Green Lane for financial institutions in February 2024; as of June 2026 it reported 139 Standard and Green Lane applications submitted to date and five solutions in live testing.
Bank of Thailand regulatory sandbox
The Bank of Thailand, which opened a fintech regulatory sandbox in late 2016, listed 10 sandbox project tracks as of April 2026, whose participant counts sum to 90, from QR payment (14) and biometrics (19) to letters of guarantee (18), the National Digital ID (12) and programmable payment.
Sandbox financiero (Ley 7/2020), and the fall in applications
Spain's Treasury ran a national financial regulatory sandbox under Law 7/2020 from 2021. Its first cohort drew 66 applications, 12 of which entered testing. By 2025 demand had fallen to two applications across the ninth and tenth cohorts, one of which received a favourable assessment, and the Government approved a draft law (Anteproyecto, 17 December 2024) that replaces closed cohorts with year-round intake and cuts pre-assessment to 45 working days.
South Africa's Intergovernmental Fintech Working Group, a joint body of the financial regulators, opened a cross-regulator sandbox in April 2020 that took 54 unique applications and admitted nine sandbox tests from eight firms in its first cohort, then moved to a rolling intake.
Project-based regulatory sandbox (new technology demonstration scheme)
Japan's cross-government regulatory sandbox, created in 2018 under the Productivity Improvement Act and made permanent in 2021 under the Industrial Competitiveness Enhancement Act, had approved 33 demonstration plans involving 152 businesses by 19 March 2025, across mobility, IoT, fintech and healthcare.
CFPB Compliance Assistance Sandbox, rescinded in 2022 and withdrawn again in 2025
The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau opened a national Compliance Assistance Sandbox in September 2019, issued two sandbox approval orders in December 2020, terminated one of them in June 2022 and rescinded the policy with effect from 30 September 2022; a reissued version of January 2025 was withdrawn in May 2025.
CSA Regulatory Sandbox, succeeded by the Financial Innovation Hub
Canada's provincial securities regulators, acting jointly as the Canadian Securities Administrators, authorised 13 firms through the CSA Regulatory Sandbox between 2016 and 2021, before it was succeeded by the CSA Financial Innovation Hub and its decision list stopped being updated in December 2023.
ASIC enhanced regulatory sandbox
Australia's government introduced the enhanced regulatory sandbox on 1 September 2020, letting firms test financial services and credit activities for up to 24 months without a licence, and ASIC's register lists 23 users, four current and 19 past.
SINTEG-Verordnung, the energy-transition experimentation clause
Germany's federal government ran a time-limited regulatory experimentation clause for the SINTEG smart-energy showcases from June 2017 to June 2022, under which the Federal Network Agency received 49 notifications of experiments but only two claims for compensation of regulatory costs.
Experimenten Elektriciteitswet 2015-2018, and its erosion
The Dutch economy ministry let energy cooperatives and owners' associations deviate from the Electricity Act 1998 through 19 exemptions granted in four rounds between 2015 and 2018, then closed the scheme to new entrants; by 2024 only 10 of the experiments were operational.
Bac à sable réglementaire in the energy sector
Under the 2019 energy and climate law, France's energy regulator CRE and the energy directorate DGEC granted temporary derogations from network access rules to 30 projects, 25 by CRE and 5 by DGEC, of which six were running and reporting indicators in May 2025 and two had been generalised into regulation in 2024.
Italy's FinTech regulatory sandbox, and its contraction
Italy's FinTech sandbox, run by the Bank of Italy, Consob and IVASS under the MEF's FinTech Committee, admitted 16 projects from its first application window (November 2021 to January 2022) but only 3 from its second (November to December 2023), after applications fell by about 80.7 percent.
Bank of Ghana Regulatory Sandbox
The Bank of Ghana, which launched a regulatory and innovation sandbox pilot in 2021, admitted six firms into its Regulatory Sandbox for one year in January 2026 to test the exchange, custody, administration and issuance of virtual assets.
AFSA FinTech Lab at the Astana International Financial Centre
The Astana Financial Services Authority granted five FinTech Lab sandbox licences in 2022, saw the first participant graduate to a full licence that year, and had 18 licensed firms in its sandbox at the end of 2022.
Banque Centrale de Tunisie regulatory sandbox, first cohort
The Banque Centrale de Tunisie launched a regulatory sandbox in January 2020, admitted four fintech solutions to its first cohort in September 2020, ran tests with real customers and partner banks for 13 months, notified exit in September 2022, and drafted a circular on digital enrolment and remote bank account opening from the results (BCT Rapport annuel 2022).
Sandbox Regulatório do Banco de Moçambique
Banco de Moçambique admitted 11 participants, chosen from 19 applicants, to the sixth edition of its regulatory sandbox in March 2025, and at the same ceremony gave participation certificates to the five fintechs that had completed the fifth edition.
Regulatory Sandbox Licence of the Economic Development Board
Mauritius's Economic Development Board, operating a regulatory sandbox licence regime for innovative financial projects since September 2018 by the World Bank's dating, had nine firms in its sandbox when the World Bank compiled its global database of sandboxes in 2020.
Bank of Uganda regulatory sandbox
The Bank of Uganda reviewed five applications to its regulatory sandbox in the year to June 2025, issued deficiency letters to all of them, and reported one firm, Rexial Payment Systems Limited, exiting the sandbox after testing and applying for a payment systems operator licence.
Regulatory Sandbox Framework for Capital Markets, first cohort
Zambia's Securities and Exchange Commission admitted four innovations to the first cohort of its capital markets sandbox, with testing starting on 19 November 2021, and announced on 15 July 2024 that live testing had been completed and directed all four to suspend operations inside the sandbox pending evaluation and exit.
Securities and Exchange Commission of Zimbabwe regulatory sandbox
The Securities and Exchange Commission of Zimbabwe published a list of seven innovative financial technology solutions approved for testing in its regulatory sandbox in July 2026, among them asset, securities and infrastructure tokenisation platforms, a crowdfunding platform and a blockchain capital raising platform.
Austria's Financial Market Authority admitted eight FinTechs to its Regulatory Sandbox between its launch on 1 September 2020 and January 2023, five seeking authorisation as European crowdfunding service providers and three offering crypto-asset or securities services, and one participant had obtained a licence for a digital trading platform by the start of 2022.
Regulatorisk sandkasse for AI (Datatilsynet and Digitaliseringsstyrelsen)
Denmark's data protection authority and digitalisation agency selected two projects from 23 applications for the first round of their regulatory sandbox for AI in July 2024, two from 18 applications in June 2025 and three more in July 2026, seven projects in all.
Datatilsynet's regulatory sandbox for privacy-friendly innovation
Norway's data protection authority ran eight sandbox projects at the end of 2025, five of them jointly with the Financial Supervisory Authority on data sharing against financial crime, and completed two projects (Akershus University Hospital and Mobai's SALT biometric verification) during the year.
Bank of Lithuania regulatory sandbox, with one test in seven years
The Bank of Lithuania opened its regulatory sandbox to applications on 15 October 2018 and, by the page's last update on 27 June 2025, listed one innovation ever tested in it: UAB Workpower's peer-to-peer insurance platform, authorised on 13 June 2019 and tested from 24 October 2019 to 23 October 2020, which led the bank to draft proportionate rules for P2P insurance.
Narodna banka Slovenska regulatory sandbox
Slovakia's central bank opened its regulatory sandbox on 1 January 2022 and lists one former participant, Crowdberry Investment Platform, which entered on 22 November 2023, tested an electronic bulletin board for secondary trading of crowdfunded securities with selected clients from 15 December 2024 to 18 April 2025, and exited on 15 May 2025.
Ukraine's Ministry of Digital Transformation and the Ukrainian Startup Fund opened a sandbox for AI and blockchain products in 2025 and, in its first year, received more than 80 applications and admitted 15 companies to a first cohort that completed testing.
Bank of Russia regulatory sandbox (regulativnaya pesochnitsa)
The Bank of Russia decided in 2025 to create the legal conditions for introducing 4 digital financial services piloted in its regulatory sandbox, out of 10 pilot applications it considered that year in identification, artificial intelligence, insurance, distributed ledgers and other areas.
JoRegBox, the Central Bank of Jordan regulatory sandbox
The Central Bank of Jordan approved three companies on 31 October 2024, out of nine applications to the first cohort of its JoRegBox regulatory sandbox launched in February 2024, to begin testing digital financial products with real customers, among them the escrow platforms E-Damana and Watheq.
The National Bank of the Kyrgyz Republic approved six special regulatory regimes between October 2020 and August 2026, letting a microcredit company, three payment and e-money firms and two banks test operations outside its standing rules, judged testing successful and closed for four of them between April 2022 and February 2025, and ended one early with the licence revoked in March 2022.
SECP Regulatory Sandbox, four cohorts and an open window
Pakistan's Securities and Exchange Commission approved 31 business models for testing in its Regulatory Sandbox across four annual cohorts from 2020 to 2023, out of 125 fintech applicants, with intake rising from six selected in the first cohort to 11 in the fourth.
Bank of Jamaica FinTech Regulatory Sandbox
The Bank of Jamaica's FinTech Regulatory Sandbox, effective from March 2020, had received 50 applications and approved 29 of them for testing by the end of 2025, including four new applications from three entities in 2025.
Financial Regulatory Commission sandbox regulatory environment
Mongolia's Financial Regulatory Commission admitted three products and services to its sandbox for one year in the fourth quarter of 2022 and released one, the MonPay digital bond, on 30 December 2022 after a year of testing, leaving four under test.
NAMFISA Regulatory Sandbox, microlending cohort
Namibia's non-bank financial regulator NAMFISA launched its Regulatory Sandbox in May 2023, received 10 applications for its first, microlending cohort, and had admitted three participants (ReferredBy Financial Solutions, Ergo Analytics trading as Verime, and the microlender Express Credit) with a fourth application under review by its 2025 annual report.
Central Bank of Azerbaijan regulatory sandbox
The Central Bank of the Republic of Azerbaijan began testing its first regulatory sandbox participant in December 2024 and admitted three more whose testing began in 2026, out of 14 applicants.
FRA Sandbox of the Financial Regulatory Authority
Egypt's Financial Regulatory Authority launched its regulatory sandbox for non-banking financial services in July 2025 under Law No. 5 of 2022 and Board Decree No. 163 of 2024, and by its first annual report (September 2026) had received 49 applicants, held seven projects at initial approval and moved two, GIG Egypt and Lumin Soft with Azimut, into live testing.
Mohit-e azmoon-e tanzimgari (regulatory sandbox) of the Central Bank of the Islamic Republic of Iran
The Central Bank of Iran's regulatory sandbox, run by its subsidiary the National Informatics Corporation as secretariat, received 10 applications in its first call (July to August 2022) and admitted two to testing, rejected seven and saw one withdrawn, and a second call drew five applications, all of which were under review when the secretariat published its one-year report in August 2023.
The National Agency of Perspective Projects of Uzbekistan registered 24 firms in its capital market regulatory sandbox between 26 February 2024 and 12 October 2026: two in 2024 and four in 2025, all six foreign banks, brokers or depositories, then 18 in 2026, mostly Uzbek banks and investment intermediaries, and the register showed no participant stripped of its status.
New Zealand's Financial Markets Authority announced a pilot fintech regulatory sandbox in December 2024 and on 29 April 2025 admitted six firms, chosen from 24 applications, to test products, services or business models with FMA guidance; in December 2025 the FMA said the pilot was still running and closed to new participants.
Regulatory Laboratory (regulatory sandbox) of the National Bank of Georgia
The National Bank of Georgia, under a sandbox framework it approved in May 2020, took 19 supervised firms through the final real-environment stage of its Regulatory Laboratory between June 2021 and June 2026, 14 of them banks, microfinance organisations and payment firms testing remote identification in 2021, and listed one further project, the Ranko credit-offer platform, in real-environment testing in October 2026.
Energy Sandbox (spatii de testare inovativa in domeniul energiei)
Moldova's Commission for Innovative Testing Spaces, established under Government Decision No. 66/2025 and run from the Ministry of Energy, completed its second round of evaluation in January 2026 and selected three projects for testing, from the consortium led by Wise Agile SRL, from Sandrologic Grup S.R.L. and from the Romanian company SC Bluenote Communications SA.