The Compliance Structure Every Staffing Platform Needs by 2026

Belgium does not start by asking whether a worker is an employee or a contractor. It starts by asking who is giving the instructions.

That question sits underneath a rule most foreign companies discover too late. In Belgium, lending your employees to another company that then directs their work is prohibited by default. Not restricted. Prohibited, with criminal and administrative penalties attached. Temporary agency work is the main legal exception and to use it, you need a regional licence.

That is the TEA model. It has become considerably more relevant in the last year. The Flemish government has stated that only licensed temporary work agencies may provide employer-of-record services in Flanders. And the EU Platform Work Directive must be in national law across the EU by 2 December 2026 bringing a presumption of employment and algorithmic management rules for anyone matching workers to clients through a digital system.

Two separate legal frameworks. Both asking the same underlying question about who really controls the work. If you run a staffing platform, a marketplace, or an EOR arrangement touching Belgium, this is what you need to understand before that deadline.

How does the TEA model work for staffing platforms in Belgium?

Start with the default rule, because everything else is an exception to it.

Under the Act of 24 July 1987, it is in principle prohibited for an employer to lend its employees to another company that then uses those employees and exercises authority over them. The prohibition is deliberately broad. It applies within the same financial and economic group, and it applies internationally, including where foreign workers are placed with a client in Belgium.

What counts as exercising authority is decided on the facts, not the contract. Belgian practice looks at whether the worker needs the client's approval to take holiday, whether they report absences to the client, whether the client can impose disciplinary measures, and whether the client decides on pay increases. If those things are happening, authority has transferred whatever the services agreement says.

There is a narrow carve-out for giving instructions without triggering the prohibition, and it has four cumulative conditions: a written contract exists between the employer and the user; the permitted instructions are listed in that contract; those instructions do not undermine the employer's authority; and the actual working arrangement matches what the contract says. The user must also inform the works council secretary, or if there is no works council, the person designated under the prevention committee's rules.

Temporary agency work is the real exception. Under the TEA model, a licensed agency is the legal employer, and the law expressly permits the client to exercise part of the employer's authority. That is the structural difference: temporary agency work is not a workaround for the lending rules. It is the legally recognised form of the thing the lending rules otherwise ban.

The constraint attached to that permission: temporary agency work is only allowed for defined reasons replacing a permanent employee, a temporary increase in workload, exceptional work, or in-flow hiring with a view to permanent employment. A platform cannot use the TEA structure for indefinite, open-ended placements.

What licence does a staffing agency need to operate in Belgium?

A regional one. Possibly four of them.

The underlying law is federal, but licensing sits entirely with the regions and communities the Flemish Region, the Walloon Region, the Brussels-Capital Region, and the German-speaking Community each run their own authorisation regime. Without prior authorisation, a temporary work agency cannot lawfully carry out temporary agency work activities in Belgium.

Flanders. Recognition from the Flemish Region is required, including where the head office is not located in Flanders. The agency must pay a surety of €75,000 to the Social Fund for Temporary Workers, with one third €25,000 payable when the recognition application is submitted. Recognition is also required for recruitment and selection carried out with the intention of performing temporary agency work.

Wallonia. Agencies must obtain authorisation demonstrating competence, solvency, and fiscal and social compliance, and must meet the Social Fund's requirements. The Walloon public service has 80 days to respond from the date the application is complete, after which the response is deemed favourable. Agencies already licensed in Flanders, Brussels, or the German-speaking Community can apply through a simplified exemption route but there is a trade-off worth knowing: with the exemption, losing your licence in the other region automatically costs you the Walloon exemption too. Applying through the full procedure avoids that dependency.

Practical sequencing. Each region requires separate recognition, but once an entity is recognised in one region, obtaining recognition in another is typically easier. Which means the region you apply in first is a decision, not an accident.

Can an EOR legally employ workers in Belgium without a TEA licence?

This is where the position hardened recently, and it is the single most important development for anyone running an EOR arrangement into Belgium.

Belgium has no dedicated legal framework for employer-of-record services. For years that left providers operating in a grey area positioning themselves either as regulated temporary work agencies or as unregulated HR service providers, with neither federal nor regional government taking a public position.

The Flemish government has now taken one. Its stated position is that only entities holding a valid temporary work agency licence may provide EOR services in Flanders. It also requires that EOR activity stay strictly within the legal boundaries of temporary agency work meaning the same limited list of permitted reasons applies. An EOR cannot use the licence to run indefinite placements that fall outside those categories.

Brussels and Wallonia have not issued equivalent explicit guidance. Belgian practitioners expect them to apply a similar standard.

Why this follows logically from the lending rules. An EOR's entire proposition is that it becomes the legal employer while the client directs the day-to-day work. Under the Belgian definition, a client directing day-to-day work is exercising employer's authority which is exactly what the lending prohibition targets. Absent a TEA licence, the structure sits squarely in what the 1987 Act prohibits.

The penalties are not theoretical, and they got heavier this year. Prohibited lending is punished under Article 177 of the Social Criminal Code as a level 3 sanction, and it falls on both the company lending the personnel and the user. Two changes have compounded: level 3 base amounts were doubled in the reform of the Code, effective 1 July 2025, and the multiplier applied to all social criminal fines rose from 8 to 10 for offences committed on or after 1 February 2026.

For anyone selecting a provider: ask which regions they hold recognition in, and ask to see it. This is a verifiable licence, not a claim.

How does the EU Platform Work Directive affect staffing platforms in Belgium?

The Directive formally Directive (EU) 2024/2831 must be transposed into national law across the EU by 2 December 2026. It does three things: it makes it easier to establish the correct employment status of people doing platform work, it regulates algorithmic management with transparency and human oversight requirements, and it improves transparency in cross-border situations.

Belgium starts from an unusual position. It legislated ahead of the Directive. Under the 2022 Labour Deal, Article 337/3 of the Programme Act of 27 December 2006 already contains a rebuttable presumption of employment for people working through a digital labour platform, built on eight criteria. The presumption is triggered if at least three of the eight are met, or two of the last five.

The eight criteria centre on what the platform can do: restrict which clients the worker can serve, set rules on appearance or conduct, restrict how work is organised through sanctions, limit what the worker can earn, supervise work electronically, use geolocation beyond basic functionality, demand exclusivity, and restrict working methods. Belgian practitioners assess that this existing presumption already complies with the Directive's requirement.

Two reasons that does not mean nothing to do.

First, scope. The Directive's platform definition is broad enough to reach freelancer marketplaces, staffing platforms, and portal-driven agency models not just ride-hailing and delivery. If you match workers to clients through a digital system and manage that matching algorithmically, you should assume you are in scope until you have established otherwise.

Second, algorithmic management is separate from status. The transparency, human oversight, and data-limitation requirements apply to how the automated systems work, regardless of whether the people using them are employees or genuinely self-employed. Getting classification right does not discharge those obligations.

The convergence worth noticing. The Belgian criteria and the lending prohibition are testing the same thing from two directions: who actually controls the work. A platform that sets rates, monitors performance electronically, and restricts how workers organise their day is exercising authority under the platform criteria. A client doing the same things to a placed worker is exercising authority under the lending rules. Same substance, two frameworks.

What are the employee lending rules for companies hiring workers in Belgium?

For a company on the receiving end hiring or using workers rather than supplying them the rules matter just as much, because liability runs both ways.

Three practical positions.

If you are using a service provider's staff, keep the instruction relationship inside the four cumulative conditions: a written contract, the permitted instructions listed in it, no undermining of the provider's authority, and actual practice matching the contract. Inform the works council secretary. The last condition is the one that fails most often contracts drafted correctly, then day-to-day practice drifting into direct management.

If you are using an EOR, verify the provider's regional recognition before the first hire, and check that the arrangement fits one of the permitted temporary agency work reasons. This is now explicit in Flanders.

If you are bringing in staff from a group company abroad, the prohibition still applies being part of the same group is not an exemption. There is a narrow intra-group route: a permanent employee, placed temporarily and exceptionally, with a tripartite agreement between employer, host company, and employee, and the social inspection services notified at least 24 hours in advance. In practice it is used sparingly, given the administrative burden and the visibility it creates with the inspectorate.

Bottom line

Belgium's structure is unusual in Europe because it does not start by classifying the worker. It starts by asking who holds employer authority and it prohibits transferring that authority unless you are operating inside a licensed exception.

That single design choice explains most of what foreign staffing platforms and EOR providers find surprising here: why a services agreement with an instruction clause is not a solution, why licensing is regional rather than national, why the Flemish position on EOR providers followed almost inevitably from the 1987 Act, and why Belgium was already most of the way to the Platform Work Directive before it was written.

With the December 2026 transposition deadline now a fixed point on the compliance calendar, the practical question for any platform touching Belgium is narrow and answerable: where does employer authority actually sit in your model, and do you hold the licence that permits it to sit there?

If your platform or EOR arrangement touches Belgium and you want to understand how your structure maps onto this framework, explore what we are building at adtsolution.com or reach the team at experts@adtsolution.com.

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