Be Aware - November 2025

Does hearing an employee always trigger the deadline for dismissal for serious misconduct?

Dismissal for serious misconduct is subject to very strict conditions. Employers have to consider both the seriousness of the employee's misconduct and the formal requirements.

If an employee is dismissed for serious misconduct, they're dismissed with immediate effect and they won't get an indemnity in lieu of notice. The dismissal has to be implemented within three working days after the employer becomes aware of the facts justifying the dismissal. A working day is taken as all days except Sundays and bank holidays.

It's well-established case law that the condition of sufficient certainty should be assessed based on the moment the person in the organisation with the power to make the decision on a dismissal for serious misconduct is informed about the facts. It's also case law that the three-working-day timeframe only starts when there's sufficient certainty on the facts. If the facts are unclear or when it seems there could be a valid justification for the employee's conduct, an employer can investigate the facts in more detail without triggering the three-working-day period.

Confronting the employee involved with the findings of the investigation and allowing the employee to explain their defence is generally considered a tool for obtaining the required certainty. Even if the facts seem obvious, the employee could still invoke an unexpected justification or even only mitigating elements leading the employer to conclude dismissal for serious misconduct isn't appropriate.

Confronting the employee with the findings of the investigation doesn't always mark the starting point of the three-working-day period for deciding on an eventual dismissal for serious misconduct. A judgement from the Employment Appeal Tribunal of Brussels on 19 March 2025 is an example where this was not the case.

When a colleague from the IT department set up a new computer for an employee, by accident he found inappropriate and offensive communications. The employer summoned the employee for a meeting, where she was given the choice to accept termination by mutual consent (without payment of a termination indemnity) or dismissal for serious misconduct. She refused to sign the termination by mutual consent. The same day the employer dismissal the employee for serious misconduct, which the employee then contested before the Employment Tribunal.

The employee said the employer didn’t establish that they’d discovered the facts less than three working days before the dismissal. The employer bears the burden of proof concerning the compliance with this three-working-day rule.

While the Employment Appeal Tribunal repeated the general principle that confronting the employee with the findings of the investigation can be a tool for obtaining sufficient certainty, it concluded the hearing wasn’t the moment the employer obtained sufficient certainty about the facts in the case.

There were no minutes taken during the meeting, so the employer couldn’t prove the employee was given the opportunity to defend herself during this meeting. The employee could establish the employer had prepared both an agreement for a termination by mutual consent and a dismissal letter before the meeting, which implied the employer had already decided before the meeting that the employment contract would be terminated. This led the Employment Appeal Tribunal to conclude the meeting with the employee wasn’t the moment the employer obtained sufficient certainty of the facts, so the dismissal for serious misconduct was implemented outside the three working-day-period and was invalid.

 

Employer contribution for meal vouchers could increase by EUR 2 as of 2026 

Meal vouchers are a popular benefit in kind in Belgium. Provided all conditions are met, the employer’s contribution for meal vouchers is exempt from all taxes and social security contributions.

On 10 October 2025, the Belgian government decided to update the rules on meal vouchers. Under the current legislation, the employer contribution is a maximum of EUR6.91 per meal voucher. The government has decided to increase this to EUR8.91 as of 1 January 2026. The employee contribution should be at least EUR1.09.

A Royal Decree increasing this maximum will be promulgated in the coming weeks or months.

The maximum contribution per meal voucher will increase, but it's also possible to have meal vouchers with a lower employer contribution. If an employer isn’t bound by a collective bargaining agreement stipulating an increase, the employer contribution can remain unchanged on 1 January 2026.

When deciding whether to increase the employer contribution for meal vouchers, it’s worth bearing in mind that the government agreement also stipulates that ecovouchers and cultural vouchers will be abolished.

No draft legislation on the abolition of ecovouchers has been published and the government agreement doesn’t specify when ecovouchers and cultural vouchers will be abolished. Ecovouchers can be up to EUR250 per year and sport or cultural vouchers up to EUR100 per year, so the increasing the maximum value for meal vouchers could be used to compensate for the abolition of ecovouchers and sport or cultural vouchers.

The other conditions for meal vouchers being exempt from social security contributions and taxes will remain the same.

These conditions include that granting meal vouchers must in principle be set out in a collective bargaining agreement at joint committee or company level. If a company doesn’t have a trade union delegation (the body that generally negotiates collective bargaining agreements at company level) or if an employee’s role isn’t usually covered by collective bargaining agreements at joint committee or company level (for instance senior management), meal vouchers can also be introduced through a written agreement with the individual employee.

One meal voucher per effectively started day of work should be granted. No meal vouchers can thus be granted for days sick leave or holiday leave.

In principle employees get one meal voucher for each day they work, irrespective of the number of working hours on that day. So the system can be particularly interesting for part-time employees.

Companies with several work schedules in force can choose a system where the number of meal vouchers is calculated based on working hours rather than working days. The number of meal vouchers is then calculated by comparing the actual working hours with the employee’s normal working hours on a quarterly basis.

Under this system, a part-time employee working a five-day week of half days and a part-time employee working full days for half the full-time number of working days receive the same number of meal vouchers. This system should in principle be introduced through a collective bargaining agreement at company level.

Companies without any staff representative body can, however, also introduce it through the work regulations.

Meal vouchers now only exist in electronic form through cards issued by one of the service providers licensed by the Belgian government. One downside of meal vouchers is that the employer has to pay service provider fees.