Is EOR legal in Belgium?

Short answer: yes, but not automatically, and not in the form many global providers sell elsewhere. Belgium is one of the few EU countries that specifically prohibits making your staff available to someone else. Getting the structure wrong can make your client company the legal employer.

The rule: Article 31

The governing text is the Act of 24 July 1987 on temporary work, temporary agency work and the hiring out of workers to users. Article 31 §1 sets out the prohibition: an employer may not place its employees at the disposal of a third party who uses those employees and exercises over them any part of the authority that normally belongs to the employer.

Two things make this stricter than it first appears. It is not limited to commercial labour leasing — it catches any arrangement with that effect. And the trigger is not payment or contract form but authority: if the user company is effectively directing the worker, the prohibition is engaged regardless of what the paperwork says.

That is a meaningfully different test from the ones used elsewhere in this market. New Zealand asks whether someone is an employee or a contractor. France asks which collective agreement applies. Belgium asks a third question that neither of those raises: who is exercising employer authority, and are they allowed to?

Why EOR collides with it

The standard Employer of Record proposition is that the provider becomes the legal employer while the client manages the work. Stated that plainly, it describes exactly what Article 31 prohibits: one company employs, another directs.

This is why you will see global providers handle Belgium differently from their other markets — sometimes routing through a licensed temporary agency, sometimes insisting on a specific contract annexe, and occasionally declining Belgium altogether or serving it only through a local partner. Those are not arbitrary product decisions. They are responses to Article 31.

The three lawful routes

An arrangement can be compliant. There are three recognised paths, and a provider should be able to tell you without hesitation which one it is using.

1. Licensed temporary agency work (uitzendarbeid / travail intérimaire)The cleanest route. Temporary agency work is the express carve-out from the prohibition: a licensed agency may employ a worker and place them with a user. Licences are issued regionally — Flanders, Brussels and Wallonia each license separately — so a provider must hold the right licence for the region where the work happens. The trade-off is that agency work carries its own rules: permitted reasons for use, a specific joint committee, and equal-pay obligations relative to the user’s own staff.
2. Employment with a written instruction agreementThe route most EOR providers rely on. Article 31 permits the user to give instructions provided a written agreement between the user and the employer sets out, explicitly and in detail, which instructions may be given — and those instructions must not erode the employer’s authority. Instructions on working time and health and safety are always permitted and need no agreement. Get this annexe right and the arrangement holds; leave it out and the same facts become prohibited hiring out.
3. A permitted exception, or inspectorate consentNarrower cases: cooperation between companies within the same economic and financial group, or the temporary performance of specialised tasks requiring a specific professional qualification. Beyond those, an arrangement can be authorised case by case with the prior consent of the Social Legislation Inspectorate. This route exists but is not a general-purpose solution and should not be assumed.

The written instruction agreement

Because route two is the one most commonly used, it is worth being precise about what it requires. This is the part providers most often gloss over.

There is also a consultation step that is easy to miss. The user must inform its works council of the agreement, in writing or electronically. Where there is no works council, the information goes to the person designated under the rules of the Committee for Prevention and Protection at Work. A provider that never mentions this obligation has probably not thought the structure through.

What happens if you get it wrong

The consequences fall substantially on the client, not only the provider, which is the reason to care about this before signing rather than afterwards.

Consequence	Who is exposed
The user is treated as the employer, with an indefinite contract deemed to exist	Client company
Joint and several liability for wages, social security contributions and taxes	Client and provider
Criminal and administrative sanctions under the Social Criminal Code	Both, and responsible individuals
Termination protection and notice obligations arising directly against the client	Client company
Questions over whether the provider’s invoices are even enforceable	Provider

The practical exposure is the second row. If contributions were underpaid across an arrangement later found unlawful, the client can be pursued for them — and the amounts are substantial in a country where employer social security runs around 27 per cent of gross.

Questions to ask a provider

Five questions will tell you quickly whether a provider understands Belgium or is selling you a template built for somewhere else.

• Which of the three routes are you using? A confident, specific answer is the baseline. Vagueness here is the warning sign.
• If you rely on agency work, which regional licence do you hold? Flanders, Brussels and Wallonia license separately, and the licence must match the place of work.
• Can I see the written instruction agreement? Ask for the actual annexe, not a description. Check it lists specific instructions rather than a blanket authorisation.
• Who retains disciplinary and termination authority? If the answer is effectively “you do”, the structure is fragile.
• What do we need to tell our works council? A provider that raises this unprompted has done the work.

Frequently asked questions

So is EOR actually legal in Belgium, or not?

It is legal when properly structured, and unlawful when it is not. The distinction is not cosmetic: the same commercial arrangement can fall on either side of Article 31 depending on whether a compliant written instruction agreement exists and whether the provider genuinely retains employer authority. Treat any provider who answers this question with an unqualified yes, and no explanation of structure, with caution.

Does it make a difference which region the employee works in?

For the agency route, yes. Temporary agency licences are issued by the regions — Flanders, Brussels and Wallonia — and a provider needs the licence covering the place of work. Language obligations for employment documents also follow the region: Dutch in Flanders, French in Wallonia, and either in Brussels depending on circumstances. A document in the wrong language can be void.

We only give the employee day-to-day instructions. Is that a problem?

It depends entirely on whether there is a written agreement describing those instructions. Instructions on working time and on health and safety are always allowed. Anything beyond that needs the Article 31 written agreement, set out explicitly and in detail. “Only day-to-day instructions” is precisely the situation the written agreement exists to legitimise — without it, those instructions are evidence of prohibited hiring out.

Is using a contractor instead a safer option?

It moves the risk rather than removing it. Belgium scrutinises false self-employment, and a reclassification brings back-contributions and employment protections. If the working relationship looks like subordination, calling it a service contract does not help — much as it does not with Article 31.

Can our own foreign entity just employ someone in Belgium directly?

Yes, and for some situations that is the cleanest answer. A foreign company can register as an employer with the NSSO and run Belgian payroll without incorporating a subsidiary. It requires DIMONA declarations, the correct joint committee, indexation handling and a Belgian social secretariat in practice — but it sidesteps Article 31 entirely, because nobody is hiring out anybody.

Does an EOR remove our compliance risk?

Not in Belgium, not fully. It transfers administration and it can transfer employer obligations, but the joint liability consequences of a non-compliant structure reach the client. That is the opposite of how EOR is usually marketed, and it is the single most important thing to understand about this market.