When children ‘run’ a shop in Belgium, where does the law draw the line?

For customers, the weekend enfants personnel initiative was an unusual encounter with local retail life. For children, serving or guiding shoppers can offer a glimpse of what their parents do each day. Yet the practical lesson is straightforward: if a young person performs tasks that form part of a shop’s productive or commercial activity, the organiser should obtain advice before opening the doors.

The Federal Public Service Employment, Labour and Social Dialogue — SPF Emploi in French and FOD Werkgelegenheid in Dutch — says Belgian law begins with a general prohibition on child labour. It defines the protected group as minors under 15 and young people who remain subject to full-time compulsory education. Educational activities and a narrow range of individually authorised cultural, artistic or advertising activities are treated differently, but ordinary retail work cannot simply be relabelled as entertainment.

That distinction prevents a charming community event from becoming a shortcut around safeguards designed for inexperienced workers. Greeting visitors or observing an employee is not necessarily equivalent to operating a till, restocking shelves, lifting deliveries or assuming responsibility for customers. What happened in Beauraing cannot be classified more precisely without the children’s ages and a description of what they actually did.

Since 4 May 2026, a 15-year-old who is still in full-time compulsory education may enter a student-employment contract for strictly defined light work, according to SPF Emploi. The authorised list includes reception assistance, cloakroom work, shelf-stacking, retail sales assistance, certain logistics and brief, physically light cleaning. The work must require no specialised training, must not involve mechanical equipment and must not threaten the young person’s health, safety, development or schooling.

For this group, work during a school week is limited to two hours on a teaching day and 12 hours across the week. During a school-free period lasting at least one week, the ceiling is eight hours a day and 40 hours a week. Overtime and work between 20:00 and 06:00 are prohibited. So are Sundays and public holidays, with an additional rest day required immediately before or after Sunday. A weekend arrangement can therefore be lawful on a Saturday but still breach the rules if it extends into Sunday.

Students aged 15 who have completed the first two years of secondary education, and all students aged 16 or over, generally pass the initial age test for student work. This remains subject to rules on schooling, permitted duties, working time and workplace safety. Student At Work, the information service operated through Belgium’s social-security system, provides a French, Dutch and English eligibility tool and access to My Student at work through CSAM.

Before inviting an employee’s son or daughter behind the counter, a retailer should establish five things. First, record the young person’s exact age and whether full-time compulsory schooling

The written student contract

Parents and teenagers can verify their remaining reduced-contribution hours and download an employment certificate through My Student at work. As of August 2026, the general reduced-social-contribution package is 650 hours a year, although regional family-benefit consequences can differ. A household in Beauraing should therefore consult the Walloon information shown in the Student At Work questionnaire or its family-allowance fund rather than assuming that a rule quoted for Vlaanderen or the Brussels-Capital Region applies unchanged.

Language can also become a practical safety issue. In Beauraing, the commune and most public-facing guidance operate in French; federal employment information is available principally through the French SPF Emploi and Dutch FOD Werkgelegenheid sites, with Student At Work also offering English. A young worker should receive instructions in a language they understand, especially for emergency procedures, restricted equipment and customer interactions. Families unfamiliar with Belgian administrative French can use the English Student At Work portal, but the binding workplace documents and applicable collective agreement may still be in French.

There are two legitimate instincts here. Retailers and families may see a supervised shop weekend as a warm way to explain working life, strengthen ties between colleagues and introduce young people to customer service. Child-protection and labour-enforcement authorities, however, must look beyond the event’s tone. If children replace staff, handle normal sales work or contribute to turnover, the protective rules become central even when nobody intended exploitation.

La DH’s report does not say whether an inspection occurred, whether the shop sought advice or whether any authority considered the arrangement unlawful. It would therefore be wrong to infer a violation from the headline alone. The Beauraing episode is better read as a prompt for due diligence: visibility on the shop floor can make a promotional experiment look like ordinary employment, and the legal classification depends on facts rather than branding.

No announced follow-up has been identified. If the retailer repeats the initiative, the questions to watch are whether it publishes the participants’ ages, distinguishes observation from productive duties, explains adult supervision and confirms the relevant contracts or authorisations. Other Belgian businesses considering a similar family weekend should first contact the regional Directorate for Supervision of Social Laws. For questions specifically concerning child labour, SPF Emploi lists [email protected] and provides the applicable forms and guidance online.