We share two articles with you published on the Confédération Construction (Construction Confederation) website.
To better protect companies, existing rules concerning payment periods for commercial transactions will be improved from 1 February 2022, the consequence of a law published on 30 August 2021 in the Moniteur Belge.
After this date, the payment period between companies will be limited to 60 civil days regardless of the size of the company concerned by the transaction. The statutory payment period continues to be 30 days and companies are able to depart from this but must not exceed 60 days. Any contractual period exceeding 60 days will simply be considered as never having been provided for in the contract. And if no specific period is provided for in the contract, the statutory period applies. Exemptions to the law may be possible for certain sectors but nothing is planned at the moment.
These new rules determine, among other things, that:
- companies are unable to agree between each other to a period of more than 60 calendar days. The verification period is not an integral part of the payment period and the terms of a contract cannot make any exception to the rule;
- the date of receipt of the invoice cannot be defined contractually. The payment period starts on the date the debtor receives the invoice and cannot be extended by the parties setting an artificial date for the receipt of the invoice.
