Everything You Need to Know About the Carryover of Statutory Vacation Days

Until recently, it was not possible to carry over statutory vacation days to the following year. Statutory vacation days that could not be taken due to force majeure had to be paid out. Starting this year, this has changed. That is to say, employees are still required to take the vacation to which they are entitled. However, under certain conditions, employees can still carry over vacation days to the following year. This year marks the first time employees can take advantage of this option, and this could also lead to changes within your organization as the year comes to a close.

Effective immediately, an employee may carry over statutory vacation days that could not be taken before the end of the year to a later date, up to 24 months after the end of the vacation year. The legislature sought to prevent employees from “saving up” vacation days without restriction and carrying them over to the following year. For this reason, an important restriction has been placed on the carryover of vacation days. Vacation days may only be carried over if the employee is unable to take them due to one of the following reasons for suspension of employment: - Work-related accident or occupational disease - Non-work-related illness or accident - Maternity leave or leave resulting from the conversion of maternity leave - Paternity leave - Preventive leave and preventive breastfeeding leave - Adoption leave - Foster care leave The question of whether an employee was actually “unable” to take all vacation days is interpreted strictly to prevent employees from saving up vacation days at their discretion. We’ll explain this using an example. An employee has scheduled his last five days of statutory vacation to take time off during the last week of December. A few days before that, the employee becomes unable to work until the end of the year. Consequently, the scheduled “vacation” days are no longer considered vacation but are converted into a period of incapacity for work. As a result, at the end of the year, the employee is no longer able to take these five vacation days and, in principle, can carry them over to the following year. Suppose the same situation were to occur during the summer vacation. In the first week of July, the same employee plans five vacation days for a family vacation. If the employee becomes unable to work for two weeks and the vacation days are converted into a period of incapacity for work, the employee still has time that year to use these five vacation days. In that case, the employee must take these vacation days, and they cannot be carried over to the following year.

If an employee carries over a number of vacation days to the following year, this does not mean that the vacation pay will also be paid out in the following year. Blue-collar workers still receive their vacation pay through the vacation fund during the vacation year, and white-collar workers still receive their remaining vacation pay in December of the vacation year. In short, the amount corresponding to carried-over vacation days may not be deducted from the total vacation pay owed for that year. The carried-over vacation days are therefore unpaid if they are taken in 2025 and 2026, for both blue-collar and white-collar workers. After all, they are already paid out this year, and the vacation pay is calculated based on the December 2024 salary.

Carried-over vacation days may be taken up to 24 months after the end of the year for which they were originally accrued. In other words, it is possible for an employee to take carried-over vacation days two years later while no longer employed by the same employer. The new regulation explicitly stipulates that, upon termination of employment, the carried-over vacation days must be listed on the employee’s vacation certificate. The employee may take the carried-over vacation days with their new employer. Please note, however, that these vacation days will no longer need to be paid out. This is because payment was already made in the vacation year in which the vacation days were originally supposed to be taken. Would you like to learn more about the transfer of statutory vacation days and vacation pay? The team at Crauwels Advocaten is ready to advise you.