The EU Blue Card, revamped in 2021 to compete with the United States’ H-1B programme, is still not fully available in Belgium. According to a 23 October report in The European Post, the European Commission has escalated infringement proceedings, sending Belgium—and fellow laggards France and the Netherlands—a reasoned opinion demanding complete transposition of Directive 2021/1883. Belgium adopted a skeleton law in May 2025 but never issued the implementing decrees needed to remove a contested labour-market test and bring salary thresholds in line with the EU standard. Each month of delay, the Commission warns, undermines the bloc’s ability to plug critical skill gaps in IT, engineering and life sciences, areas where Belgium hosts major multinational hubs around Brussels, Leuven and Antwerp. For employers the stand-off means continued reliance on slower national work-permit tracks or intra-corporate-transfer permits, both of which impose higher minimum salaries and lengthier document checks than the Blue Card. HR teams should prepare for possible retroactive application of the new rules once Belgium acts; companies may be able to convert existing permits to Blue Cards to gain family-reunification and mobility benefits. The next procedural step could be a referral to the Court of Justice of the EU and daily penalty payments—a scenario that typically spurs reluctant member states into action. With federal elections due in mid-2027, business groups are urging lawmakers to finalise the decrees early next year to avoid becoming a talent-acquisition outlier inside the Benelux.
Source: The European Post
