Belgium: which language does your software speak to your workforce in?
It is a question that almost never appears on a software requirements list, and in Belgium it decides whether a system is usable: what language does it appear in at the workplace?
Elsewhere this can often be handled with a language setting. In Belgium it touches applicable law and the answer comes not from your head office but from where the operating unit sits.
The site decides, not the corporate language
"We work in English internally" is not an answer to this question in Belgium. It describes a state of affairs that, depending on the site, may have no legal effect.
Belgium does not regulate language in employer-employee relations uniformly at federal level, but by language region. What matters is where the place of business is.
Where an employer has a place of business in the Dutch-language region, the Decree of 19 July 1973 makes Dutch the language for relations between employer and employees and for company acts and documents required by law. The sanction is unusually sharp: breaches render the document null. The court declares this of its own motion and orders replacement, and the nullity may not operate to the worker's disadvantage. The employer is liable for damage arising from void documents.
In the French-language region the Decree of 30 June 1982 applies with a comparable structure: other languages may be used alongside, but the French version is the authoritative one. For Brussels-Capital the language legislation on administrative matters applies, where the consequence is milder because no nullity is provided for, only replacement of the document. There is in addition a German-language region with its own regime.
One exception concerns cross-border situations. After the European Court of Justice held in 2013 that requiring cross-border employment contracts exclusively in Dutch disproportionately restricted freedom of movement for workers, the Flemish decree was amended in 2014. Since then a second, equally binding version may be drawn up under certain conditions in an official language of the EU or the EEA. That relief concerns employment contracts; it does not lift the basic rule for other documents.
The unsettled question and why it concerns you anyway
That an employment contract falls under the language decrees is not in dispute. Whether an MES screen does is another matter.
The decrees speak of relations between employer and employees and of company acts and documents required by law. Part of the professional literature takes the view that the scope is not confined to employment contracts but covers the employer-employee relationship as a whole. We are not aware of a definitive ruling specifically on software interfaces, and we do not claim there is one.
In practice the distinction helps less than it appears to. Ask not whether an interface is a document, but what the system does towards the employee. A terminal that displays a work instruction, issues a safety message, demands an acknowledgement or records a performance confirmation plainly sits within the employer-employee relationship. Waiting for judicial clarification means carrying the risk yourself in the meantime.
There is also an argument that needs no legal question at all: a safety instruction the operator does not understand is not a safety instruction.
Treat workplace language not as a setting in a user profile but as a property of the operating unit. That position is defensible in every case, and it costs almost nothing in development provided it is built that way from the start.
Two sites, two regimes, one company
Many companies in Belgium run more than one site: one in Flanders, one in Wallonia, perhaps an office in Brussels. Several language regimes can then apply within one company at the same time according to where each operating unit sits, and regardless of what language is spoken in the boardroom.
For a manufacturing system that means the same work instruction should appear in Dutch at one site and in French at the other not as a translation
project afterwards, but as a property of the system. How far this is legally required depends on the output in question; as a design principle it is in any case the safe choice.
How seriously the sanction is meant is suggested by a 2015 decision of the Brussels Labour Court of Appeal: in the case decided, a document previously drawn up in another language lost its effect after the seat moved into the Dutch-language region. What governed was the location of the operating unit, not the moment of drafting. Whether that generalises is a question for your counsel; the direction is clear enough.
Translated into software: a system that treats language as a one-off installation decision becomes a problem at the first relocation, plant opening or acquisition.
New technology is a procedural step of its own in Belgium
Collective bargaining agreement No. 39 applies to companies employing on average at least 50 workers in the preceding calendar year. Where the employer invests in a new technology and that investment has significant consequences for employment, work organisation or working conditions, the employer must at least three months before the introduction begins inform in writing about the nature of the technology, the circumstances justifying it and the nature of the social consequences. The information goes to the works council or, failing that, the trade union delegation. The consultation that follows is conducted according to the respective competencies of the worker representative bodies.
Two terms decide whether it applies, and both are narrower than people assume.
When are the consequences "significant and collective"?
The agreement looks to whether at least half, and at the same time at least ten workers, of a given occupational category are affected. Where the affected categories together comprise fewer than one hundred workers, the calculation is made globally.What counts as "new"?
Newness is judged relative to what previously existed in the company, not relative to the state of the art in the sector. That a technology is long established elsewhere does not remove that quality.The beginning of introduction can be a visible change or a change to working conditions or work organisation. So the three months do not run from go-live but from the point at which it becomes visible on the floor.
The practical mistake is therefore always the same: the project is commissioned, built and accepted, and the information is given shortly before rollout. By then the period is already behind you.
The three months under CBA 39 are not an administrative step at the end but a lead time at the beginning. They belong in the project plan, not the rollout checklist.
Multilingual by construction, not as an afterthought
The language regime is a property of the operating unit
Not a personal preference a user can change. Every operating unit follows the language regime that applies to it, and what the system outputs there — screens, messages, work instructions, printed accompanying papers follows that assignment. In Brussels there is the additional question of whom a given output is addressed to. When an operating unit is added, an assignment is set rather than a project started.
Separate terminology per language, not machine translated
Manufacturing terminology is no place for automatic translation. We maintain a curated term list per language that your people approve the same discipline with which we document your pricing rules.
Documents in the recipient's language, not the sender's
Where the system produces paperwork that reaches an employee, its language follows that employee's site. Including when the order was created somewhere else. We supply the CBA 39 documentation Description of the technology, the workplaces and activities affected, what changes in work organisation, what data the system records. It is the same documentation we prepare for a works council in Germany, adapted to a different procedure. It is available before the period starts, not after.
Five questions to settle in Belgium before the contract
One per operating unit, not one per company. In Brussels the language of the recipient or target group applies on top. Establish this before the requirements are written.
If it is a user setting, anyone can change it and your assignment is no longer an assignment.
Screens, terminal messages, shift paperwork, acknowledgements, training material. That list determines the scope, not the number of menu items.
Check the number of affected workers per occupational category before the schedule is fixed.
Not go-live, but the first visible intervention in work organisation or working conditions. Count backwards from that date.
Thirty minutes, your list of sites.
Bring where your plants are and what your people actually see at the terminal.
We will work through which outputs would have to appear in which language,
and whether your planned project falls inside the CBA 39 period.
You run the factory. Leave the software to us.