Be Aware - May 2025

Changes to registering vocational training

A full-time employee is in principle entitled to five days professional training per year. This is based on article 52 of the Act of 3 October 2022 holding various measures concerning employment. The allocation is reduced pro-rata if the employee works part-time or only works for part of the year.

A collective bargaining agreement at joint committee level can stipulate a different number of days professional training.

The previous government intended to introduce mandatory registration for all training days, so complying with the minimum number of days could be checked systematically. The previous government promulgated the Act of 20 October 2023 concerning the creation and the management of the federal learning account. The federal learning account is an online application where employers and training providers can register professional training days. The application is available at careerpro.be - Federal Learning Account. Initially, the intention was that using the federal learning account would be mandatory by 1 November 2024.

But the application frequently had technical difficulties. Employers increasingly complained that registering all training days was a considerable administrative burden. So the previous government postponed the entry into force of the mandatory registration through the federal learning account from 1 November 2024 to 1 May 2025.

A new coalition government was formed in January 2025. The coalition agreement stipulates that the federal learning account will be abolished. The coalition partners decided that an employer should be allowed to establish by all available evidence that all employees have received the number of days training they're entitled to and that an obligation to register all trainings constitutes an unnecessary administrative burden.

This part of the coalition agreement has not yet been implemented into actual legislation. The coalition parties apparently changed their mind. The Act of 6 April 2025 concerning the temporary postponement of the registration in the federal learning account doesn't abolish the federal learning account. The only point confirmed into legislation is that registering in the federal learning account is not mandatory, but optional, in the period up to 1 September 2025. But there's no particular advantage for an employer that voluntarily uses the system.

New legislation will still need to be introduced in the coming months to regulate the situation as of 1 September 2025. The new government announced they will introduce a system that's less burdensome from an administrative point of view, but it remains unclear what this will be.

Postponing the duty to register training days for each employee separately should not be confused with registering a training plan. Employers with at least 20 employees should have an annual training plan. This plan should explain the policy on professional training, for instance to what extent external trainings will be used. The annual training plan should be completed at the latest on 31 March. If the company has a works council, the council should advise on the training plan by 15 March at the latest. The works council doesn't necessarily have to agree with the training plan.

The annual training plan should be registered at the Federal Public Service of Employment, Labour and Social Dialogue. This should be done electronically at FPS Employment, Labour and Social Dialogue [BE].

 

Can a service car have a track and trace system?

For mobile workers, for instance technicians visiting clients, it’s common for the company car to have a track and trace system allowing the employer to monitor the location of the vehicle.

The way the system works can vary, but it’s generally used to organise work (assigning new tasks to a technician who’s in the neighbourhood), monitoring the employee’s performance (checking when the employee arrived and left a specific client) and to protect the car (by checking its location if it’s stolen).

But are these systems acceptable from an employment law point of view?

On 25 March 2025, the Belgian Privacy Authority gave a judgement that provides a good summary of the employer’s obligations in this area.

There is no specific legislation on GPS-monitoring of employees, contrary to for instance the collective bargaining agreement n° 68 of 16 June 1998 concerning the protection of privacy of workers when it comes to camera surveillance at work. But the general provisions of GDPR apply, so the track and trace system is assessed on the basis of these general requirements under GDPR.

This case concerned a technician going onsite to work on machines sold by the employer.

The first question the Privacy Authority examined was which legal basis the employer could invoke to justify processing personal data. The Privacy Authority concluded the employer could invoke several valid reasons, notably the invoicing of clients (who were paying per hour), efficiently planning the technician’s work, and monitoring the employee’s performance.

The second question was whether the processing of personal data was limited to necessary data. Here, the Privacy Authority pointed out that the invoked reasons were only relevant during working hours. The employer had set up the system so it registered only the data between 08:30 and 17:00 on work days. The Privacy Authority pointed out this didn’t fully align with the invoked justification. Sometimes, the technician worked after 17:00. The technician also couldn’t switch off the system manually, so data was collected for each day of the working week, even if the technician was on holiday or sick leave.

When it comes to the transparency requirement, the Privacy Authority concluded the employer didn’t fully comply with GDPR. While the employer had a policy informing employees of the track and trace system, the Privacy Authority thought this policy was incomplete and too vague. The policy didn’t clearly state that one of the objectives of the track and trace system was to monitor technicians’ performance.

The GDPR also requires that the people involved are informed about the categories of the personal data processed. The policy included a list of processed data, but added the list was not exclusive. The Privacy Authority ruled that this violated the transparency requirement under GDPR, as the employees couldn’t know which data would be processed by reading the policy.

Another aspect of the transparency requirement is that the people involved have to be informed about the period the processed data will be kept. The employer’s policy didn’t include information on this point, so this also infringed the GDPR. In the absence of any information on the retention periods, the Privacy Authority didn’t have to deal with the question of how long data collected through a track and trace system can be retained.