Major Labour Law Measures in the Arizona Government Agreement

After almost eight months of negotiations, Belgium’s new Federal Government has introduced a coalition agreement featuring significant changes to tax and labour law policies that could impact businesses across the country.
The following overview is structured based on the key objectives the new Government aims to achieve.

For an overview of the major tax measures, please visit Deloitte’s Tax Reforms Hub.

Visit the Deloitte Academy website for upcoming events on these measures and their potential impact on your business.

Labour market

Activation

• Reform of the unemployment coverage, including a limitation in time of the unemployment allowances, depending on the duration of your professional career (general max coverage of 2 years).
• The limitation does not apply to unemployed persons of +55y with a professional career of at least 30 years of each 156 working days (35 years as of 2030). These persons however do need to stay available for the labour market until retirement.
• Once during an effective career of at least 10 years, the employee will be entitled to resign and still be entitled to unemployment allowances for a limited period of max 6 months (extendable with another 6 months subject to specific conditions).
• Immediate abolishment of SWT (the former “bridge pension”), but with respect of the acquired rights of those currently benefitting from these systems and companies in restructuring who announced a collective dismissal/closure before 31 January 2025.

Extended workable careers

• General simplification of the various systems of thematic leave/career interruptions and harmonization in the different schemes (employee, civil servant, self-employed), tailored to the employee-scheme.
• Introduction of a “family credit” system, replacing all existing schemes linked to the birth of/care for children. Each child will have a backpack of leave entitlements that can be used in a flexible manner, with new/amended modalities. For example, grandparents that use part of the leave, or if the child has only 1 parent, the latter can benefit from the full backpack.
• Extension of parental leave to foster parents, within the current budgetary framework.
• The Federal Government will investigate “teletrainwork”, whereby hours worked on the train qualify as working time.
• The regulations governing the learning entitlements will be amended, including the abolishment of the federal learning account. It is explicitly provided that any outstanding training entitlements will not result in the payment of salary.
• For those Regions that ask the Federal Government to do so, the public holidays legislation will be amended to include the regional holiday (depending on the region: 8 May, 11 July, 3rd Sunday of September) as an official public holiday, without affecting competitiveness.

Modernization

• Employees will have the freedom to determine the working hours within the European rules in mutual agreement with the employer.
• Introduction by 30/06/2025 of a legal framework for the annualization of working hours or “accordion” schedules, with the free choice between compensatory rest or payment.
• Abolishment of the minimum weekly working time equal to 1/3rd of a fulltime scheme.
• Abolishment of the general ban on night work. In the distribution industry and connected sectors (e.g. e-commerce) work will only qualify as nightwork as of 12pm instead of the 8pm, yet without loss of purchasing power for the employees already active between 8 and 12 pm.
• Abolishment of the legally required closing day and increased flexibility regarding opening hours.
• Flexi-jobs:
  •  Increase of the maximum annual income tot 18,000 EUR and, where applicable the maximum hourly wage to 21 EUR.
  • Abolishment of the prohibition to work as a flexi-job employee for companies that are connected to your regular employer if you are a full-time employee.
  • Broadening of the scheme to all industries, with the possibility for the industries to opt-out.
•  Overtime:
  • Introduction of a uniform, structural and flexible overtime scheme, whereby the employee can benefit from 180 hours of tax-friendly overtime for overtime resulting in overtime pay.
  • Voluntary overtime:
    •  360 hours in all industries of which 240 will be payable gross for net (450/360 for the hospitality industry).
    • The individual addenda to the employment contract will no longer have to be renewed every 6 months.
    • Only possible for full-time employees and, if there is a temporary increase of work, part-time employees working part-time for at least 3 years.
• Student work:
  • 650 hours/year.
  • As of 15 years old.
• By 31/12/2025 at the latest, the Federal Government will reintroduce the trial period, whereby parties will be entitled to terminate the employment contract with a 1 week notice during the first 6 months.
• Cap of the compensation in lieu of notice to 52 weeks for new employees and activation of part of this compensation.
• The number of protection indemnities will be capped. No further details on the number of indemnities or total amount are included.
• The social partners are asked to present proposals to complete the unification of the blue- and white-collar status.

Administrative simplification

• Abolishment of the federal learning account.
• Reduction of the administrative formalities in case of part-time employment, without reducing the protection of these employees.
• Abolishment of the obligation to include all full-time working schedules in the work rules as long as the boundaries of the flexible schemes are clearly included.
• If the current legislation requires a renewal of an individual agreement each 6 months (e.g. voluntary overtime; 4-day working week), this obligation will be replaced or completed by the option to conclude an indefinite term agreement with a 6-month notice term.
• Existing and upcoming EU directives that impose reporting obligations, will be assessed to reduce the reporting obligations, particularly for SMEs.
• Risk analysis in execution of wellbeing regulations will not have to be repeated on an annual basis if the working conditions did not change (which is somewhat vague, considering that already today, there is no such obligation).
• The Federal Government will take stock of the retention periods that apply to a lot of social documents and will phase out these periods for the least important documents.

Prevention and re-integration 

Introduction of a comprehensive plan for the prevention and reintegration of employees on (long-term) illness, including multiple obligations for all stakeholders (employers, employees, doctors, health insurance funds and regional employment offices). For the employers and employees, the key elements are:

• Employers are asked to implement a proactive absenteeism policy, with regular contacts and follow up of absent employees.
• Employers will have to pay a contribution of 30% of the statutory health allowances during the first 2 months following the period of guaranteed pay. SMEs are exempted.
• Mandatory assessment after 8 weeks of illness on the request of the employer.
• Employers with +20 employees must initiate a re-integration process within the first 6 months of illness if the employee still has working potential.
• The employers could immediately start a formal re-integration procedure if agreed by the employee (currently, they have a waiting period of 3 months). For the specific termination procedure for medical force majeure, the waiting period of 9 months is reduced to 6 months.
• Employees will have the possibility to be absent twice a year (currently 3 times) for 1 working day without a medical certificate.
• Guaranteed pay will only again be due if the employee has worked for 8 weeks following a prior period of incapacity to work (instead of the current 14 days).
• The Federal Government will establish a channel to report suspicious medical certificates. These reports will be discussed with the order of doctors.
• Partial recommencement of work will no longer require the agreement of the doctor of the medical insurance fund. The agreement of the personal doctor/prevention advisor company doctor will be sufficient.

Wage regulations to protect purchasing power and competitiveness

• Continuation of (i) the wage norm and (ii) the automatic wage indexation. The social partners have to share a proposal to update the existing regulations by 31/12/2026.

Social dialogue

• Many elements of the government agreement will be offered to the social partners for a concrete proposal/advice. If the social partners cannot come to an agreement, the government will anyhow take a decision. Any proposal/advice received will be thoroughly assessed from a financial perspective, to avoid that the cost of the agreements between social partners are passed on to the tax payer.
• The social partners will have until 1 January 2027 to reduce the number of joint labour committees.
• The trade unions will not have to obtain legal personality in view of their activities in companies/social action. For their activities as service provider/organizer of other activities (e.g. payment of unemployment allowances), they will become subject to the regular rules of financial transparency and legal liability.
• By 31/12/2025, the social partners will have to formulate a proposal to amend the current gentlemen’s agreement on strikes.
• The dismissal protection for non-elected candidates of the social election will be reduced to 6 months. To be confirmed whether this will apply as of their first non-election, or only as of the second consecutive non-election.

Combatting social fraud 

The government will intensify the fight against social fraud and social dumping to the maximum as these phenomena undermine the base of our social security scheme, hinder the proper functioning of the labour market, distort the economy through unfair competition, endangering the safety and health of employees and self-employed workers.

Actions on the list include:

• Strengthening of the tax administration’s control capacity and specialized knowledge/technology, hiring additional resources with a focus on fight against fraud (special tax inspection, social fraud, judicial police, justice …). 
• Increased cooperation between social security authorities and other relevant authorities (tax, justice, police ...). 
• Imposing the formal obligation for user-companies to verify whether foreign companies that put employees at the disposal of the user-companies in Belgium are properly recognized.
• Improved data sharing between Belgian and foreign authorities.
• Wish to set a 50% minimum for potential penalties under the Social Criminal Law Code in case of aggravating circumstances.
• Increased number of inspections for industries at risk (construction, cleaning, hospitality, transport, ...); false self-employment and sharing economy/platform workers.