Contractor recognition (agréation), and when it is required

The recognition (agréation) of contractors is a federal regime created by the Act of 20 March 1991. It is granted by the FPS Economy after an examination of the company's technical, financial and professional capacity.

Its purpose is to say whether a company may tender for a public works contract above a certain amount. It is neither a guarantee of good execution, nor an insurance policy, nor an inspection of the work.

The decision is taken by the competent regional minister, on the advice of a federal committee of twenty-four members, made up on a joint basis and chaired by a magistrate. That committee rules on applications, on revisions of a recognition and on the equivalence of foreign recognitions. Recognition is therefore an administrative decision taken on the papers, not an audit of a site.

A recognition is read in two parts. The category gives the type of work: D for building, D1 for masonry and concrete, C for road works, P for electrical work, and so on across some thirty subcategories.

The class gives the maximum contract amount the company may tender for, from class 1 for the smallest amounts up to class 8 for the largest.

A company recognised as "D class 3" is therefore recognised for building work up to a given ceiling. That does not make it better than a company without recognition on a private job: it is simply eligible for a type of contract a private individual never awards.

For a house renovation, recognition is not required and its absence is not an adverse signal. Plenty of excellent ten-person firms have never applied for it, because they do not work for the public sector.

Its presence, on the other hand, says something that has been checked: an administration examined accounts, references from past jobs and qualifications at a given moment. That is a dated fact, to be read as such.

What recognition never replaces: decennial liability insurance, compulsory since 2018 for work on the closed structural shell of a home subject to planning permission, and professional liability insurance.

The FPS Economy publishes the list of recognised contractors, searchable by enterprise number, by category and by class. It is the only authoritative source.

A "recognised" mention on a website or a quote is not proof: it takes thirty seconds to check against the official list, and the category claimed has to match the work on offer.

A printed certificate or a copy of a file is no substitute for that check. A recognition can be revised, and the recognition committee also examines complaints against recognised contractors and proposes the penalties. What counts is what the list shows on the day you consult it, not what a document dated three years ago announced.

The class sets the maximum amount, excluding VAT, of the public works contract a company may tender for. In the list published by the FPS Economy, version of 18 December 2025, class 1 runs up to 135,000 euros, class 2 up to 275,000 euros, class 3 up to 500,000 euros and class 4 up to 900,000 euros.

The scale continues with class 5 up to 1,810,000 euros, class 6 up to 3,225,000 euros and class 7 up to 5,330,000 euros; class 8 covers everything above that last amount. These thresholds are not fixed: a Royal Decree of 14 April 2024 had raised them, then the Council of State annulled that decree by a judgment of 12 December 2025, which made the earlier amounts applicable again. A figure read elsewhere may therefore belong to one period or the other, and is to be read again in the official list together with the date of that list.

A class reads as a size of contract, not as a level of finish. Moving from class 3 to class 5 means that an administration examined a technical and financial capacity and judged it sufficient for heavier contracts; it says nothing about the way a job is carried out. For a roof or a bathroom at a private customer's home, no class is required, and the figure indicates no more than the order of magnitude of the public contracts being aimed at.

The category is designated by a letter and covers a general nature of work: D for general building contractors, C for road works, E for civil engineering, G for earthworks. The subcategory adds a figure to that letter and narrows the scope: D5 for general joinery, D13 for painting, D17 for central heating and thermal installations, P1 for electrical installations in buildings.

Being recognised in a category does not carry recognition in its subcategories. A few automatic equivalences exist, sometimes in a lower class — a C recognition carries C1, for instance — but they are limited and listed by the FPS Economy. A company recognised in D is therefore not, by that fact alone, recognised in P1 for electrical work.

A recognition is in principle valid for five years, and ceases to have effect if it is not renewed. That is what makes it a dated administrative decision: it reports what an authority found about a company's capacity at a given moment, not the state of that company today, nor how a job under way is going.