Employment Tax

Belgium | Indexation of salaries

Summary

Based on the government agreement on the Federal budget, measures have been announced that will mitigate, in 2026 and 2028, the full impact of salary increases based on the index mechanisms as applicable in the private and public sectors. As legislative texts are however still missing, it is ‘indexation as usual’ within those Joint Committees where indexation applies in January. For JC 200 by example this means salaries increase with 2,21% in January. Some more context below.

The detail

Depending on the applicable Joint Committee, mandatory indexation mechanisms might apply to your company. Within a lot of Belgian Joint Committees wages in Belgium are linked to inflation and automatically adjusted to reflect increases in the prices of certain goods and services. This automatic wage indexation is regulated through sectoral collective labour agreements, meaning that the timing of indexation as well as the level of the indexation may vary between sectors and thus employees.

Different indexation mechanisms exist:

• At regular points in time: the salaries are indexed automatically at the point in time as agreed upon within the applicable collective bargaining agreement, e.g. on a monthly, quarterly or annual basis regardless of the level of the index at that moment.
• Based on a progressive scale: the salaries are indexed automatically if the reference index exceeds a certain trigger index. Some collective bargaining agreements stipulate that the trigger index must be exceeded by the arithmetic average of two or more indexes.

Despite the wage norm being set at 0% for 2025-2026, mandatory indexation obligations are still valid.

New governmental measures had however been announced intervening in the indexation mechanism for 2026 and 2028. Although the general principle of the indexation of salaries remains untouched, it is the aim of the government to introduce measures resulting in an indexation mechanism that only applies on salaries below EUR 4,000 gross. For employees whose salaries are above that threshold, the salary increase will be limited to the index applied on the threshold. Companies would nevertheless still have to pay half of the indexation on amounts above EUR 4,000 directly to the state treasury rather than to the employees. This measure would be invoked a maximum of two times during the current governing period: once in 2026 and once in 2028. If multiple wage indexations occur in a given year, only the first indexation will be capped.

This new measure is, however, not yet enacted, and it is no longer expected that this can be done prior to 1 January 2026, when typically a lot of Joint Committees (among which JC 200) foresee an indexation of salaries. Based on the officially stated indexes and the formula as applicable within JC 200, this means that within JC 200, the salaries will increase by 2,21%, effective 1 January 2026.

So for now, index as usual.

Contact us

For a deeper discussion on the above, please reach out to your Vialto Partners point of contact, or alternatively:

Philip Maertens
Partner

Nic Boydens
Partner

Bart Elias
Partner

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