Belgium: Social Criminal Law: Higher Fines and Clearer Consequences of Aggravating Factors

On 19 December 2025, the Belgian legislator adopted an Act regarding some reforms to the social criminal law. This Act entered into force on 1 February 2026 and applies to offences committed from that date onwards.

In practice, the act has two principal effects: a substantial increase in the multiplier applied to fines (from x8 to x10) and a reinforcement of the rules relating to aggravating factors under the Social Criminal Code. These amendments form part of the implementation of the De Wever government agreement and align with broader ongoing reforms of the Social Criminal Code.

A. Increase of surcharges on criminal and administrative fines

Art. 101 of the Social Criminal Code prescribes the possible fines. In order to maintain the actual value of the fines, the fines are multiplied by a certain factor. Over the years, this multiplier has been increased occasionally, so the fines can follow inflation and other trends (although not the same, this is similar to an indexation system). The Act of 19 December 2025 increases the multiplier factor, resulting in an increase in administrative and criminal fines by a factor of 10 instead of the previous factor of 8. This modification updates the Act of 5 March 1952 (which contains the general multiplication system) and ensures that fine levels evolve in line with economic trends, supplementing existing sanctions in the Social Criminal Code (article 101). The multiplication by 10 will only affect breaches of the Social Criminal Code that take place on or after 1 February 2026. This means that in case a court or administrative decisions will impose a fine to sanction violations of the Social Criminal Code that took place before 1 February 2026, the fine will still only be multiplied by 8.

After the increase of certain fines, for sanctions of level 3 and 4, by the reform of the Social Criminal Code in July 2027, this is the second time in two years that the actual fines have been increased.

This leads us to the following overview of the sanctions:

 

Penal Sanctions (Effective 01/07/24)

Level	Prison Sentence	Penal Fine	Admin. Fine
1	None	None	80 – 800
2	None	400 – 4,000	200 – 2,000
3	None	1,600 – 16,000	800 – 8,000
4	6 m – 3 y	4,800 – 56,000	2,400 – 28,000

Note: Crimes as from 01/07/24- Amounts are already multiplied by 8 (opdeciemen/décimes additionnels) + are (sometimes) to be multiplied by the number of involved employees (maximum 100).

Penal Sanctions (Effective 01/02/26)

Level	Prison Sentence	Penal Fine	Admin. Fine
1	None	None	100 – 1,000
2	None	500 – 5,000	250 – 2,500
3	None	2,000 – 20,000	1,000 – 10,000
4	6 m – 3 y	6,000 – 70,000	3,000 – 35,000

Note: Crimes as from 01/02/26- Amounts are already multiplied by 8 (opdeciemen/décimes additionnels) + are (sometimes) to be multiplied by the number of involved employees (maximum 100).

 

B. Less discretion for the court or administration in case of  offences with an aggravating factor

With the reform of 2024, some aggravating factors were introduced in the Social Criminal Code (e.g. malicious intent or when violence is committed against the social inspection services). The court (or administration) would have to take into account these aggravating factors when deciding upon the amount of the fine to be imposed. This already implied that judges would have to look at the higher end of the scale of prescribed fines, but the Code did not impose clear instructions.  The Act of 19 December 2025 now tightens the treatment of offences involving aggravating factors. Specifically, for level 4 offences under the Social Criminal Code, the criminal or administrative fine may not fall below 50% of the statutory maximum. This is consistent with the broader trend in recent reforms, which have introduced heightened sanctions for serious infringements, particularly where intent, obstruction, or deliberate abuse is present.