The annual report of Brussels local transport company MIVB shows that MIVB buses, trams and metros carried fewer passengers in 2025. The number of journeys by bus, tram and metro fell by 1.4 per cent to 396.1 million, still an impressive figure.
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Strikes dent Brussels transport company’s figures as recruiting stop is expanded
Colin Clapson
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The decline is mainly due to the many strikes against the Belgian government and in particular its pension reform policies. Disruption due to works also intensified.
“If the strikes are filtered out of the figures, there is an increase in passenger numbers,” says MIVB spokesperson Laurent Vermeersch. For instance, the number of journeys on an average weekday rose by 1.5 per cent to almost 1.4 million journeys per day. And at weekends, more passengers are already being carried than before the pandemic.
The MIVB is also generating increased revenue from ticket and season ticket sales: €240 million in 2025, compared to €226 million the previous year. This has resulted in the cost recovery ratio – the ratio between revenue and costs – rising to nearly 30 per cent. Or, to put it another way: 30 per cent of the costs of the services provided by the MIVB are covered by revenue from tickets, but also by, for example, advertising revenue and savings.
No longer hiring
The Brussels public transport company STIB is the capital’s largest employer but is no longer recruiting new staff as a result of the Brussels region’s challenging budgetary situation, which has led to a recruitment freeze across Brussels’ public services.
A recruitment freeze at MIVB in 2025 only applied to non-operational staff. Technicians and drivers, for example, could still be recruited. For 2026, the recruitment freeze applies to all employees. Staff leaving the company as a result of natural turnover – including people retiring, falling ill or finding another job – will not be replaced either.
But the company is required to maintain service levels and keep the same number of buses, trams and metros running. “For the time being, that is working; we will see how things develop,” says spokesperson Laurent Vermeersch.
The MIVB is the largest employer in the Brussels Region, providing employment for 10,000 staff members. Before the recruitment freeze, in some years the company recruited several hundred people a year.