The right to a 4-day week is proposed in Belgium

On 15 February, Belgium’s coalition government unveiled a reform proposal aimed at, among other things, encouraging the emergence of new forms of work, better protecting platform workers, strengthening the right to training, and facilitating a better work-life balance. Among its measures is the right for employees to split their working time over four days.

The proposal has been criticised by the The General Labour Federation of Belgium (FGTB), which sees the proposal as moving away from the original proposal to reduce working hours. The objective of the original proposal was to reduce stress-induced burn-out and improve the work-life balance of workers, whereas compressing 5 days into 4 will normalise long working hours and have the opposite effect according to the trade union.