Belgium recorded more strike action in 2025 than in any previous year, with 1,354,845 strike days and 820,917 workers taking part, according to figures published on Wednesday by the European Trade Union Institute.
That amounts to 313 strike days per 1,000 employees, breaking the previous record of 299 set in 1993.
The figures show that union protests against the policies of the Arizona government were larger than those directed at the first Dehaene government.
More than one million strike days is exceptionally high in historical terms, said ETUI researcher Kurt Vandaele, adding that records were broken in almost every category.
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He also noted that the protests were spread across the whole year, unlike the strikes against Dehaene’s Global Plan, which were concentrated mainly in the fourth quarter.
Education accounted for the largest share of strike action in 2025, at 31.3%. The public sector made up nearly half of all strike days, at 49.4%.
Several private sectors also recorded unusually high numbers of strike days, including food manufacturing, chemicals and petroleum, transport and logistics, and the social profit sector.
In some cases, however, these were linked to individual disputes within a company or to strikes against a sectoral collective labour agreement, Vandaele said.
Regional differences were also stark. Wallonia recorded 499 strike days per 1,000 employees in 2025, and Brussels 456, compared with 192 in Flanders.
Even so, Vandaele said that more than 500,000 strike days in Flanders was still an exceptionally high total.
