Article

16 April 2007

Limosa & Business Travel-Provided by the Belgium Government to ACTE on April 16, 2007

-- 1. The scope of the Limosa mandatory declaration

As of April 2007 all foreign employees, self-employed persons and trainees will have to declare their activities in Belgium to the authorities in advance – exactly as is already the case in some other EU Member States.

This mandatory declaration is part of a larger project: Limosa. With this obligation, the Belgian authorities want to create better guarantees for the free movement of services and workers. Extra attention will be paid to everyone's rights and conditions of employment in Belgium.

The entrepreneur will enjoy some major administrative benefits as a result of Limosa.
Proper execution of the Limosa declaration will make the administrative obligations in Belgium much easier, with regard, inter alia, to drawing up labour regulations, the personnel register, the individual earnings record and the wage settlement and keeping them up to date.

The portal site (www.limosa.be) plays an important part in this project. Immediately after each declaration via the website a Limosa-1 certificate is supplied. This certificate must be presented to the Belgian client or principal. If an employee, self-employed person or trainee is unable to produce this Limosa-1 document, the Belgian client or principal must report this to the authorities immediately.

In time the portal site www.limosa.be will be expanded into a dedicated portal. This will allow you to fulfill almost all your administrative obligations concerning working in Belgium via a single electronic portal.

The Limosa declaration is an important step towards legal employment in Belgium, while observing the Belgian and European regulations. Employers, employees or self-employed persons may not lose sight of other obligations besides these.

More information can be found at http://ec.europa.eu/idabc/en/document/6796/194


2. exempted categories of workers

There are various exemptions from the mandatory declaration. They depend mainly on the nature of the activities pursued or their short duration.

One of those exempted categories concerns employees and self-employed persons who come to Belgium to attend meetings in a closed circle. They are exempt if their stay required for these activities does not exceed 5 days per calendar month. Meetings in a closed circle imply various types of meetings, mostly in the form of a type of business trip, negotiations with a customer concerning contracts, holding evaluation interviews, strategic meetings, etc.

If a business travel exceeds 5 days/month but takes place in a period spread over two calendar months (e.g. starts the last 5 days at the end of November and continues during the first 3 days of December), the calculation of the mission taking place in each calendar month is done separately).

If the meeting takes longer, a declaration must be made.


3. Two types of declarations

The classical declaration, used for a single, occasional mission to Belgium, consists in entering some of the data related to the mission, and is valid for the duration of that mission, e.g. an American company sending a manager to its Belgian subsidiary during 18 months to implement a new procedure.

This declaration, which can be done online (in English, 24/24 and 7/7), only takes a few minutes. A return receipt (the L-1 form) is issued immediately in an electronic form (PDF document).

If a person frequently undertakes business travel to Belgium (lasting more than 5 days/month per mission), a single declaration can be done for all missions for a maximum period of 12 months. This also takes only a few minutes.


4. The next phase of the Limosa project

In a second phase (mid 2007), all information concerning foreign activities in Belgium (posting documents, work permits, residence permits, …) will be centralized in one database, leading the way to the third phase (planned for the second half of 2007): the creation of a single point of contact, enabling the foreign employer, employee or self-employed worker to declare his activities or request a work permit, residence permit, professional card, …. This site will then dispatch the request automatically to all Belgian federal or regional administrations involved (implying the unique collection and multiple use of data, and the exchange of data among the administrations), where a file will be opened.

This way, American workers being sent on a mission to Belgium, will not be confronted anymore to the complex way Belgium is structured, as, fully implementing the principles of multiple use of data, the competent (regional) services for awarding e.g. work permits and residence permits will be able to process the application much faster.


5. Data protection

In order to make a declaration, an account must first be created, in the name of a person. It is therefore necessary to adequately identify this person filing the declarations and therefore the application requires entering at least one identification number (passport, social security, ..). As a declaration can also be done by a third party (e.g. a consultancy firm) duly authorized by the company or the self-employed worker, it is necessary to identify the person declaring the worker, in order to avoid false declarations using the name of company that is not involved. The same principles apply when identifying the worker sent to Belgium.

All declarations are done in a secured internet environment (https) to ensure the protection of the data entered.

The Belgian legislation on social documents requires that the data is stored during 5 years

Only persons duly authorized have access to these data, that is the inspection services listed in the law and the Belgian administrations involved in the project. A privacy commission (the “sectoral committee”) only delivers the authorizations after having scrutinized the request in the light of the privacy legislation. The actual consultation of the data is managed by the Crossroads Bank for Social Security, which uses a reference repertory (indicating which types of data each institution needs and is authorized to receive in order to fulfill its tasks) so that it may preventively ensure that a social security institution only has access to the data it is entitled to and that concern the people who are known in the data base. One of the main missions of the Crossroads Bank is to promote the information security and the privacy protection by the actors in the Belgian social sector so that all the institutions and people involved may have a justified faith in the system.


6. Transitional period

Although the mandatory Limosa declaration has come into effect on 1 April 2007, a transitional period of six months for activities that have already started, has been inserted in the law.

Moreover, as this is a new obligation, the competent inspection services have been instructed to play an assisting and consulting role in this matter rather than a repressive one during a starting period.

The inspection services dispose of a discretionary power when being confronted with a non-compliance. All elements of the cross-border activity will be taken into account by the inspector when assessing the appropriate action to be taken.