European Court of Justice: Opinion questions the automatic expiry of vacation days

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European Court of Justice in Luxembourg: Employers must remind of deadlines

Photo: Arne Immanuel Bänsch/dpa

One of the special features of many proceedings at the European Court of Justice (ECJ) is that the court often follows the assessment given by the court's Advocate General in its judgment.

That is why this preliminary decision is often given special weight, even if the judges have not yet judged.

Now there are indications that the ECJ should strengthen the rights of employees in the question of whether vacation not taken can simply expire.

In any case, from the opinion of Advocate General Richard de la Tour on Thursday, it is clear that the employer must do his part to ensure that vacation

expire.

For example, the employee must be informed about the rest of the vacation and the corresponding deadlines.

Although the opinion is not legally binding, the judges at the ECJ often follow it.

A verdict is expected in the coming months.

Long statutes of limitations legal

The background to this is a case from Germany in which a tax clerk and accountant did not take all of her statutory minimum leave.

She justified this with the high workload in the law firm and demanded compensation for the vacation days.

The Düsseldorf Higher Labor Court had ruled that the employer should have pointed out the relevant deadlines and now had to pay compensation for the vacation days.

The Federal Labor Court then stayed the following appeal procedure in order to ask the ECJ for a preliminary ruling on whether the entitlement to paid annual leave can be statute-barred if the employer does not ask the employee to take his leave entitlement.

From de la Tour's report it emerges that neither the limitation period provided for in German law nor its length are fundamentally problematic.

However, the limitation period can begin at the earliest at the point in time at which the employer pointed out the periods.

If the employee is not aware of this, the period cannot begin.

In this interpretation, German law with the three-year limitation period would not conflict with EU law.

beb/dpa