Belgium Braces for Rail Strike Called for October 12
Belgium’s socialist CGSP/ACOD trade union has called a public-sector strike for Monday 12 October 2026, with the railway sector set to be included, and its rail branch has announced it will file the formal strike notice needed to halt trains. The action is timed for the eve of Prime Minister Bart De Wever’s ‘state of the union’ address to the federal Parliament and is aimed at pressing the government over its budget choices.
According to RTBF, the CGSP’s rail section will open the procedure to file a strike notice (préavis de grève) covering the network, national secretary Tony Fonteyne confirmed on Friday. If accepted, the notice would open the door to serious disruption to rail services across the country.
A Strike Timed for the Budget Debate
The strike day was set for 12 October precisely because it falls the day before De Wever is due to deliver his annual policy statement to the federal Chamber. The La Libre newspaper reported that the mobilisation is intended to “weigh on the government’s budget choices,” with the union opposing planned public-sector savings, changes to the automatic indexation of wages and a possible increase in VAT.
Belgium’s federal coalition—the so-called ‘Arizona’ government of N-VA, Vooruit, CD&V, MR and Les Engagés—is under pressure from the EU’s excessive-deficit procedure to find roughly €10 billion in savings. The goal is to bring the deficit down from 5.2% to 4% of GDP by 2029, and a budget conclave was expected at the end of September.
Rail Procedures Under Scrutiny
The railway strike is not automatic. Filing a valid strike notice is a strict requirement, and RTBF noted that two notices have already been refused this year by HR Rail—the legal employer of SNCB and Infrabel staff—because an ‘alarm-bell’ procedure had not been triggered. How the union navigates that process will determine whether trains actually stop on 12 October.
The dispute sits within a wider standoff between the socialist union and rail management. CGSP Cheminots has set out its opposition to ‘Shiftwerk 2.0’, a new shift system planned for 1 January 2027, has demanded talks on excluding the rail sector from the flexi-jobs regime, and has raised concerns over the reorganisation of the OCC/RCC traffic control centres.
A Divided Union Front
The action will not be unanimous across Belgium’s union landscape. Speaking to the Belga news agency, ACOD vice-president Uwe Rochus said all sectors could take part, meaning disruption is possible not only on public transport but also in education, at the post office and in prisons. ACOD said there would be picket lines in various locations and that it would present an alternative ‘state of the union’. “New savings will have concrete consequences: less accessible public services, worse working conditions and more pressure on purchasing power,” the union said in a statement cited by VRT NWS.
The Christian CSC/ACV public services union, however, will not join the strike. Its president, Ilse Heylen, said the initiative belongs to the socialist union and that CSC would instead organise an awareness-raising action.
Separately, CSC and the FGTB have called a national demonstration in Brussels on 9 October, marching from the Gare du Nord to the Gare du Midi as what they describe as a “first clear warning” to the federal government. Rail staff have not been asked to strike on that occasion.
Political Stakes and What to Watch
The CGSP has framed the budget as a political test rather than a technical one. Federal president Laurent Pirnay, writes La Libre, argued that because a budget is “a political act,” workers and citizens have a say in it, while the union said it refuses to let the Arizona government “once again make workers and public services pay.”
For commuters, the practical question is whether the notice survives HR Rail’s scrutiny. If it does, 12 October could bring significant cancellations across the SNCB network, echoing the strikes that drove up compensation claims at the national rail operator in 2025. The coming weeks will show whether the pressure from the streets shifts the budget talks—or hardens the government’s position ahead of the Prime Minister’s address the following day.
Sources: RTBF, La Libre, VRT NWS, CGSP Cheminots.