Be Aware – March 2025

Some employment law aspects of the new government agreement

On 31 January 2025, the new federal government reached an agreement on its new governmental policy. The agreement still needs to be transposed into law so it’s not legally binding yet, but in this newsflash we wanted to highlight a couple of key HR developments soon to be implemented in Belgium.

 

Employment contracts

• The government agreement states it will reintroduce the trial period, so both the employer and the employee can terminate the employment contract with a notice period of only one week during the first six months of employment.

• The legal notice periods when dismissing “new recruits” will be capped at maximum 52 weeks. The agreement doesn’t provide a specific date for defining who a “new recruit” is, but presumably this cap would apply to new hires as from the date on which the act is implemented.

• The possibility to cumulate protection indemnities (for example for dismissal linked to applications for time-credit leave, parental leave, discriminatory dismissal) will be “restricted,” but the agreement doesn’t go into any further detail.

On dismissal protections, the agreement also states that the dismissal protection period for unelected candidates to social elections, who are unelected for the second time, will be reduced to six months (reduced from two years of protection today). The agreement doesn’t specify whether this change will be applicable to candidates as of the 2028 social elections or to candidates in the 2024 social elections.

• The amount of permitted hours of student labour (to which a specific social security and tax regime applies) will be increased to 650 hours (50 hours more than now).

• Flexi-jobs, a specific system under which retired employees and other specific employee categories can (continue to) work according to a favourable social security and tax regime, will be expanded to all sectors (compared to a limited number of sectors today).

• The agreement also speaks of a critical assessment of HR reporting requirements imposed by EU directives, in particular for SMEs. Presumably this refers to the intention to, wherever permitted by EU directive, opt out of some reporting requirements (eg provided in the CSDDD, CSRD, Gender Pay Transparency Directive).

• Belgium traditionally has a regime of unemployment with company allowance. Under this system, an employee approaching retirement age is dismissed and receives unemployment benefits paid by the Belgian state and a monthly allowance paid by the former employer up to retirement age. Accessing this system would in the future only be possible if the employee is unable to work for medical reasons. Nothing would change for people currently in the system or for people dismissed in the framework of a collective dismissal announced before February 2025.

 

Working time regulations

The government agreement includes numerous plans to simplify the working time regulations and to increase flexibility:

• Accordion-work schedules: employees and employers will be able to agree to consider compliance with working time limits on a yearly basis, instead of on a weekly or daily basis as is currently the case. Presumably the implementing act will still add maximum and minimum boundaries (reflected in for example min/max hours per week) to avoid excesses. This new schedule type would maximize flexibility, which could in turn be beneficial for a better work-life balance, for example considering school hours.

The agreement states that employees would also be able to choose how hours in excess of the average limit would be compensated, ie by payment of salary or via compensatory leave. It also adds that where “technically” possible, a time registration system should be used when applying this “accordion schedule.”

• The current legislation stipulates a part-time work schedule should consist of at least one-third of the full-time working schedule, although there are exceptions to this rule. This requirement would be abolished, but the rule that work schedules should only include blocks of at least three hours will remain applicable.

• The agreement states it will abolish the general prohibition on working at night. The rules concerning the procedure to be followed when introducing a work schedule including night work and the premiums due for work at night will still apply in principle.

• It also refers to the abolition of the duty to mention all full-time work schedules in the work regulations.

Under the current legislation, all full-time work schedules have to be included in the work regulations. The same holds for all part-time work schedules unless they only foresee work in one of the mentioned full-time work schedules.

This duty to include all work schedules in the work regulations (which requires the consent of the works council or following a staff consultation procedure in companies that don’t have a works council) would be abolished, but only if the boundaries of the flexibility are clearly set out in the work regulations. It will probably suffice to include a general framework in the work regulations, for instance the minimum and maximum number of weekly working hours, and the earliest and the latest starting hour of the working day. The existing rules concerning the number of days in advance the employer should inform the employee of the precise working hours, would be maintained.

• The new agreement aims to expand the use of voluntary overtime. The maximum number of hours of voluntary overtime work would be increased to 360 hours per year per employee (instead of maximum 220 hours today, with higher maximums applying to some sectors only). It concerns voluntary overtime hours so the employee should agree to perform voluntary overtime hours. While this agreement should under the current legislation be renewed every six months, an agreement of undefined duration would become possible.

Voluntary overtime hours are stimulated as no taxes or social security contributions would be due on the remuneration for up to 240 hours voluntary overtime work per year. No overtime pay nor compensatory leave would be due for those hours.

 

Employees on long-term sick leave

The number of employees on long-term sick leave has increased considerably in the last few years. The government agreement includes several measures aimed at facilitating a return to work for employees on sick leave.

For employers, on top of the obligation to pay guaranteed salary during the first 30 days of sickness, the government agreement also introduces the obligation to pay a contribution of 30% of the sickness allowance paid by the Belgian state, for two months after the end of the period with guaranteed salary. This obligation doesn’t apply to small and medium sized companies or if the employee is at least 55.

The employer’s obligations regarding repeated sick leave are reduced. Under the current legislation, an employee resuming work is entitled to a new period of sick pay after working at least 14 days. In the future this would increase to at least eight weeks.

If an employee has been on sick leave for one month, the government agreement stipulates that the prevention advisor – occupational health doctor should take the first step, for instance by sending a question list or by inviting the employee for a meeting.

If an employee has been on sick leave for eight weeks, the employer will have to instruct the external prevention advisor – occupational health doctor to assess the possibilities for resuming work, if any.

For employees, the government agreement stipulates an employee not showing up when invited for a medical examination by either the prevention advisor – occupational health doctor or the advising doctor of the social security administration, can forfeit the right to sick pay or the allowances paid by the Belgian state. This is an important change compared to the current situation, where an employer has generally no effective remedy if an employee refuses a medical examination by the prevention advisor.