Paul-Émile (Paul Emil) Janson (30 May 1872 – 3 March 1944) was a francophone Belgian liberal politician and the prime minister from 1937 to 1938.

[1] He studied law at the Free University of Brussels (now split into the Université Libre de Bruxelles and the Vrije Universiteit Brussel), practised as a lawyer, and also taught at the university.

Janson was elected as a liberal to the Belgian Chamber of Representatives in 1910.

In 1943 he was detained by the occupying German forces and incarcerated in the Buchenwald concentration camp.

[2][3] His sister Marie Janson was the first woman to be elected to the Chamber of Representatives in 1921 and the mother of Paul-Henri Spaak, Janson's nephew and the man who directly succeeded him as Prime Minister in 1938.