David Clarinval welcomes Amazon's announcement made during the Belgian economic mission in California: more than one billion euros invested between 2025 and 2027 on our territory. This is one of the most significant foreign investments ever made in Belgium. Excellent news for employment and competitiveness, and a direct effect of the night work reform.
Objective achieved
This investment confirms that the reforms we are carrying out at federal level are delivering concrete results. The modernisation of the night work framework, which we are currently driving forward, is specifically aimed at enabling our businesses to compete on equal terms with the Netherlands and Germany, where these practices are already common.
On one hand, the reform removes the administrative obstacles that still prevent certain logistics activities from operating efficiently around the clock, and on the other, it gives Belgium competitive conditions by starting night work only from midnight, specifically in the e-commerce and distribution sectors, in order to attract international players and develop local e-commerce.
As a reminder, the five joint committees concerned by night work are JC 201 food retail, JC 202 medium-sized food companies, JC 226 employees of international trade, transport and logistics, JC 311 large retail companies and JC 312 department stores.
Thousands of direct and indirect jobs
Beyond its financial scale, this is an extremely strong signal for our economy: Belgium attracts, Belgium inspires confidence, Belgium is competitive.
These new activities will generate quality jobs, both in logistics and in digital services, maintenance, transport and support functions. This is in addition to the expected knock-on effect for an entire ecosystem of Belgian SMEs and start-ups, which Amazon has committed to support towards new European and international markets.
David Clarinval, Minister for Employment: "This announcement is a victory for employment, and a direct consequence of the reforms I am driving to modernise the labour market. Amazon's investments confirm that Belgium is right to pursue reforms to make the labour market more flexible, particularly regarding night shift bonuses."