In today’s evolving landscape of employee benefits and sustainable transportation, the Belgian Mobility Budget is becoming a cornerstone of modern HR policy. Designed to offer flexibility and reduce environmental impact, it enables employees to swap their company car entitlement for a mix of greener, more personalized mobility solutions. With major legislative changes ahead, including new obligations in 2026, it’s essential for employers to understand both the strategic potential and administrative requirements of this system.
What is the Belgian Mobility Budget?
Introduced in March 2019 and further refined with updates in 2022, the Belgian Mobility Budget is an official government initiative that allows employees to exchange their company cars (or car budget entitlements) for a more flexible mobility package.[1] This framework enables employees to select from a wider range of transportation options that better align with their personal lifestyle, location, and environmental values.
According to the official Belgian Mobility Budget framework (mobiliteitsbudget.be), the system is structured around three distinct pillars:
- Environmentally friendly vehicles – Zero or low-emission vehicles including electric cars, plug-in hybrids with emissions under 50g CO₂/km, or other vehicles meeting specific environmental criteria
- Sustainable transportation options – This comprehensive pillar includes public transport passes, bicycle purchases or rentals, shared mobility services, walking allowances, and even housing costs (rent or mortgage interest) if the employee lives within 10 km of their workplace
- Cash component – Any remaining budget at the end of the year can be paid out in cash, subject to a special social security contribution of 38.07%
This framework aims at giving employees freedom in how they commute while encouraging more sustainable transportation choices.
Who is eligible for the Belgian Mobility Budget?
Since 2022, employees are eligible if they currently have the right to a company car based on their employer’s policy. The former 12-month waiting period has been abolished, meaning employees can opt in as soon as they are offered a car. To date, the employer decides whether or not to offer the possibility of exchanging the company car for a mobility budget. At the end of 2024, over 3% of companies is offering the framework to its employees.
Looking ahead to 2026, the Federal Government’s Easter Agreement (Paasakkoord) proposes that employers who offer company cars will also be required to offer the Belgian Mobility Budget as an alternative. While implementation details are pending, it’s likely to make the mobility budget a standard benefit across Belgian organizations [3].
Benefits of Implementing a Mobility Budget
The Mobility Budget framework offers substantial advantages for both employers and employees:
For employers:
- Stronger employer branding as a forward-thinking, sustainable organization
- Improved talent attraction and retention
- Better forecasting and control of mobility-related expenses
- Favorable tax treatment compared to salary increases
- Reduced parking needs and emissions
For employees:
- Greater flexibility to match personal commuting preferences
- Tax-advantaged access to sustainable transport and housing
- Potential cash payout of unused budget
- Active mobility and health benefits
Implementation Challenges Without the Right Tools
While the Belgian Mobility Budget offers clear advantages for both employers and employees, its successful implementation comes with a series of administrative obligations and operational complexities—particularly when companies lack an integrated system to manage both company cars and flexible mobility options.
Employers must comply with a wide range of legal and fiscal responsibilities, including:
- Tracking of budget usage per pillar: Employers must accurately monitor and document all expenses per pillar (environmentally friendly vehicles, sustainable mobility options, and cash payouts), ensuring each cost is justified and falls within the allowed framework.
- Fiscal compliance: Employers must apply the correct social security contributions and tax treatments per budget component (e.g., 38.07% solidarity contribution on unused budget payouts in cash). Misapplication can result in legal penalties.
- Monthly internal documentation: Employers are obligated to maintain monthly reports on mobility budget usage for each participating employee, as well as a year-end summary to verify compliance with the annual budget ceiling.
- Seamless payroll integration: Any cash component must be processed through payroll in accordance with specific legal rules, often requiring custom adjustments to salary calculation systems.
- Data retention: All supporting documents and justifications for mobility expenses must be retained and made available in case of audits by the social inspection services or tax authorities.
Without the right digital infrastructure, these requirements introduce significant risks: inefficient budget tracking, inconsistent data across tools, and difficulties generating unified reporting. As the 2026 expansion approaches, a centralized solution becomes critical to simplify administration, ensure accuracy, and scale mobility programs with confidence.
The Belgian Mobility Budget Landscape: Complete Fleet & Mobility Management
The rise of the Belgian Mobility Budget has led to a wave of new platforms offering administrative support for employers—solutions like Mbrella, Skipr, and Olympus Mobility focus primarily on enabling the flexible mobility side of the budget (pillars 2 and 3). These tools are well-suited for organizations where employees actively choose to forgo a company car. However, uptake remains relatively limited: as of 2024, only around 3.4% of eligible employees opted to exchange their company car for the mobility budget [2].
This presents a practical challenge for most employers: while mobility budgets are gaining attention, the majority of employees still rely on traditional company vehicles. As a result, organizations are often forced to operate two separate systems—one for car fleet management and another for mobility budget administration—leading to fragmented processes, duplicated effort, and inconsistent reporting.
Headlight addresses this challenge by offering a fully integrated mobility management platform that unifies both sides of the equation. Whether employees opt for a traditional company car or the mobility budget, the same system handles configuration, tracking, compliance, and reporting. This single-platform approach reduces complexity and enables organizations to support the full range of employee mobility needs without switching tools or losing visibility across programs.
By supporting complete fleet operations alongside mobility budget functionality, Headlight helps companies navigate today’s hybrid mobility reality while preparing for the broader eligibility shift coming in 2026.
How Headlight’s Mobility Management Platform Can Help Organisations
Supporting both traditional company cars and the Belgian Mobility Budget requires more than just administrative tooling—it demands a unified system capable of handling diverse mobility preferences, regulatory requirements, and operational workflows.
While other platforms on the market, such as Mbrella, Skipr, and Olympus Mobility, do a great job on the administration of flexible mobility options (pillars 2 and 3), Headlight distinguishes itself by managing the entire corporate mobility landscape in a single platform. This includes:
- Full company car lifecycle management – from selection, ordering, and delivery to maintenance, replacement, and cost tracking.
- Integrated Belgian Mobility Budget support – enabling employees to access environmentally friendly vehicles, public transport, active mobility, and housing-related benefits within the same system.
- Seamless transition support – for employees switching between a company car and the mobility budget, ensuring continuity in administration, reporting, and compliance.
This integrated approach helps organizations avoid fragmented workflows that typically arise when using separate systems for fleet management and budget administration. As a result, Headlight simplifies coordination across HR, payroll, and mobility teams—reducing manual effort and improving data consistency.
With the expected expansion of mobility budget eligibility in 2026, companies will need scalable solutions that accommodate growing complexity. Headlight is already designed with this in mind.
The Belgian Mobility Budget via Headlight
Conclusion: Navigating the Evolving Mobility Landscape
The Belgian Mobility Budget reflects a broader shift in how employers approach corporate mobility—moving toward flexible, sustainable, and employee-centric transportation solutions. As of today, most employees still rely on traditional company cars, but upcoming policy changes, such as the expected 2026 obligation for employers to offer the mobility budget, indicate that hybrid mobility models will soon become the norm.
In this context, organizations face a dual challenge: supporting employees who prefer the established company car model while enabling those who wish to opt for more flexible, sustainable alternatives. Most existing mobility budget platforms are designed to support one side of this equation, requiring companies to maintain parallel systems for fleet and budget administration.
Headlight takes a different approach. By integrating complete company car management and full Belgian Mobility Budget functionality into a single platform, it allows employers to manage both tracks within one cohesive system. This reduces administrative overhead, improves data consistency, and provides the flexibility to evolve as employee preferences and regulations shift.
As the mobility ecosystem becomes more complex, platforms that unify both traditional and emerging mobility models will play a crucial role in enabling compliance, efficiency, and employee choice. Headlight is designed with that future in mind.
Visit https://headlight.tech to learn more about our comprehensive SaaS solutions for modern HR management, including our industry-leading Belgian Mobility Budget and company car management platform.
References
[1]: Federal Public Service Finance. “Mobility Budget.” https://mobiliteitsbudget.be/nl (Accessed May 2025)
[3] https://www.prato.be/wat-brengt-het-paasakkoord-ons/
