According to Article 16 of the Code of Commerce, documents or information relating to the accounts of a trader must be retained for 10 years following the close of the financial year to which they relate.
Mention may also be made of Article 4(1)(d) of the Law of 2 August 2002 on the protection of persons regarding the processing of personal data, which makes it clear that data may be retained only for a period not exceeding the time necessary for the achievement of the purposes for which they are collected and processed.
Consequently, accounting documents must be retained for a period of 10 years.