Recruitment without discrimination: Brussels Code
The Brussels Code of 2024 is the current reference within Brussels’s competence scope. Selection criteria must comply with anti-discrimination prohibitions and reasonable adjustment rules.
The joint decree and ordinance of April 4, 2024, published on April 16 and effective October 16, 2024, covers employment and employment relations within the competence limits specified in article 6. Articles 5 and 7 protect notably age, sex, origin, disability, language, family responsibilities, and health status. They prohibit direct, indirect, and intersectional discrimination, as well as instructions to discriminate.
To draft a job offer and compare applications, link each requirement to the position’s tasks. Articles 8, 10, 13, and 14 frame possible justifications, notably essential and determinative professional requirements, whose objective must be legitimate and the requirement proportionate.
Articles 11 and 12 require processing accommodation requests related to disability. A refusal must be justified when the accommodation would be unreasonable; a charge sufficiently compensated by public subsidies is not disproportionate. Article 203 repeals the September 4, 2008 ordinance on employment discrimination.