Amazon and Belgium sign export pact: PME belges aim for 2 billion euros by 2030

On 22 October 2026, Amazon, the Belgian federal government and the e-commerce federation Becom signed a memorandum of understanding: the Amazon Export Pledge. The stated goal is to grow Belgian SME export sales on the platform from 400 million to 2 billion euros by the end of 2030. For small businesses already selling online, or considering it, this is a strong signal about how central product visibility has become to export strategy.

1. A figures-backed deal, three stated levers

According to La Libre, the agreement was signed by Economy Minister David Clarinval and Greet Dekocker, director of Becom, the Belgian e-commerce federation. Amazon commits to investing more than one billion euros in Belgium through 2027, across three areas: artificial intelligence, logistics and product visibility.

Per Amazon's official newsroom, more than 90% of Belgian SMEs already selling on the platform export internationally, generating 400 million euros in sales in 2025, including 190 million within the EU. These businesses reportedly created 3,000 jobs in Belgium and shipped more than 10 million products.

2. Why product visibility is becoming an export issue

Minister Clarinval justified choosing Amazon over a Chinese platform by citing regulatory compliance commitments, La Libre reports. But the underlying issue for an SME stays the same: a poorly built, badly translated or weakly illustrated product listing limits sales, at home and abroad.

Amazon highlights two free tools for sellers: Enhance My Listing, which automatically analyses and corrects product listings, and AI Creative Studio, for generating ad visuals and videos. These tools automate a task, but they do not replace a brand strategy or an export positioning choice.

3. What this means in practice for a Belgian SME

According to Becom, quoted by Trends-Tendances, Belgian products have a strong quality reputation but companies lack the confidence to go international, a paradox reinforced by the fact that Belgian sellers often perform better outside the EU than within the European market, held back by regulatory fragmentation.

The agreement includes a twice-yearly dialogue between Amazon, the government and Becom under the federal E-commerce+ plan, to address product compliance and consumer protection. For a business, the immediate issue remains operational: a clean catalogue, listings optimised per market, and logistics able to keep up with export.

The AI lens, humans first

The AI tools Amazon is offering under this agreement, Enhance My Listing and AI Creative Studio, automate writing, translation and visual generation for product listings. They can genuinely speed up putting an export catalogue online. But deciding which markets to target, what price position to take against local competitors, and what brand to build beyond a product listing remains a human decision. AI executes. Expertise decides, and keeps watch.