A company that has one of its own employees investigated must, from 16 December 2026, have a written policy that permits and governs the investigation. Without it, the party accepting the assignment may not take the case on. The two-year transition period ends on that date.
What changes on 16 December 2026?
The Act of 18 May 2024 regulating private investigation (wet private opsporing, Belgian Official Gazette 6 December 2024) replaced the Act of 19 July 1991 on the profession of private detective. It entered into force on 16 December 2024, the tenth day after publication.
Article 65 provides that, where the person investigated is an employee of the client, the party accepting the assignment (opdrachthouder) may only accept a private investigation if both the permission to carry out a private investigation and the detailed rules for private investigations in the workplace are set out explicitly and transparently in a written policy. Article 180 gave the client two years to comply. That period ends on 16 December 2026.
Which investigations are covered?
Article 3 sets four cumulative conditions. The activity is carried out by a natural person, on the instructions of a client, consists of gathering information about persons or about the circumstances of acts committed by them, and is aimed at supplying that information to the client in order to protect its interests in an actual or potential conflict.
An internal fraud investigation into a member of staff meets that definition. It makes no difference whether you instruct an outside firm or run the investigation in house: an organisation that investigates structurally for its own purposes is an internal service within the meaning of article 2, 17°, and needs a licence for it (article 7). Investigations that companies within the same group carry out for each other count as activities for their own purposes rather than services to third parties. Article 4 keeps a number of professions outside the scope, including the professional activities of lawyers, statutory auditors and registered auditors.
What must the policy contain?
Article 65 calls for two things: permission to carry out a private investigation, and the detailed rules under which investigations in the workplace take place. Both must be explicit and transparent. The act prescribes no particular form. According to the explanatory memorandum to the bill regulating private investigation, employees must know in advance that investigations may be conducted in the workplace, which can be provided for in a collective bargaining agreement, in the work rules (arbeidsreglement) or in a decision of the works council.
A single sentence will not do. Article 66, 9° requires the written assignment document, in every investigation into an employee, to set out the arrangements flowing from the policy. Whatever the policy leaves out therefore surfaces at the start of each assignment.
How do you put it in place in time?
If you choose the work rules, the ordinary procedure of the Act of 8 April 1965 establishing work rules applies. Where there is a works council, the council makes the amendment after the draft has been posted and at a meeting held no earlier than fifteen and no later than thirty days afterwards (article 11). Where there is none, the employer posts the draft and keeps a register of comments available to staff for fifteen days, which then goes to the competent official (article 12). If comments are made, a conciliation attempt of thirty days follows, and if disagreement persists the joint committee decides. Article 14 grants no exemption here.
Count in months rather than weeks. Starting in November leaves little room.
What happens without a policy?
The assignment may not be accepted. An employer faced at that moment with a report or an incident cannot have it investigated. The legislator set out to avoid exactly that situation and wrote the two-year period into the act for that reason. In addition, breaches of the act can lead to an administrative fine of 100 to 25,000 euro, set according to the ranges in the table annexed to the act (article 151, § 1).
What to do now
- Establish who investigates for you: an outside firm, your own internal service, or both.
- Choose the instrument: work rules, a collective bargaining agreement or a works council decision.
- Draft the detailed rules and align them with your existing fraud policy and your whistleblowing procedure.
- Start the procedure so that the policy is in force on 16 December 2026.
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