What is a permanent contract (CDI)?
A permanent contract is an employment contract that sets no end date. It runs until the employee resigns, the employer dismisses, both sides agree to stop, or the employee retires. In Belgium it is the default form of employment: if a contract does not validly set a term, or if that term is not put in writing before the work starts, the relationship counts as permanent.
What the contract fixes is the relationship rather than its length, function, pay, working time, place of work, and the obligations each side owes the other.
Because it is the default, the permanent contract is also what the law reaches for when a temporary arrangement goes wrong. Several different errors in setting up a fixed-term or agency contract end at the same destination: a permanent contract, whether or not anyone intended one.
How is a permanent contract different from a fixed-term contract?
The distinction is the presence of an agreed term. A fixed-term contract (CDD) ends by itself on its date or when the defined task is finished, and normally neither side has to give notice. A permanent contract has no such moment: ending it takes a deliberate act, and that act triggers notice.
An interim contract is temporary too, but it differs on another axis entirely. There the legal employer is the agency, not the company where you work.
How does notice work on a permanent contract in Belgium?
The notice period is calculated from seniority, and it is asymmetric: the period an employer must give is longer than the period an employee must give. Seniority accrues from the start of the contract, so the protection a permanent contract offers grows the longer the relationship lasts.
Either side can also end the contract immediately and pay compensation instead of serving notice. This is why the practical question in a Belgian dismissal is rarely whether the contract can be ended, but what ending it costs. There is no trial phase to shorten any of this, since Belgium abolished the probation period for ordinary contracts.
What does a permanent contract mean when you work through a consultancy?
On a permanent contract with a consultancy, your employer is the consultancy, not the company whose project you are assigned to. Assignments change; the employment does not. Seniority keeps accruing across projects, pay and benefits stay governed by one contract, and the gaps between assignments are the consultancy risk rather than yours.
That is the trade against freelancing: less exposure, and less control over what you charge. Sparagus employs consultants on this basis across its technology, engineering and business hubs, and you can see the roles currently open across those hubs.
