XXXX v HR Rail SA [2022]

Background

The applicant in the main proceedings was recruited as a specialist maintenance technician for railway tracks by HR Rail, the sole employer of railway staff in Belgium. On 21 November 2016, he started a traineeship at Infrabel, the legal entity acting as the ‘management infrastructure’ for the Belgian railways. In December 2017, the applicant in the main proceedings was diagnosed with a heart condition that required the fitting of a pacemaker, a device which is sensitive to the electromagnetic fields present, inter alia, on railway tracks. Since that medical device was incompatible with the repeated exposure to electromagnetic fields to which a maintenance technician on railway