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ECJ: No right to more vacation days due to Covid quarantine

Anyone who has had to spend their vacation in corona quarantine is not entitled to make up the days off. A quarantine is not comparable to an illness, ruled the European Court of Justice (ECJ) in Luxembourg on Thursday.

,   and  Viktoriya Miller
2 min read
Corona rapid tests with positive (l) and negative results lie on a table. Photo.aussiedlerbote.de
Corona rapid tests with positive (l) and negative results lie on a table. Photo.aussiedlerbote.de

Verdict - ECJ: No right to more vacation days due to Covid quarantine

Anyone who had to spend their vacation in corona quarantine is not entitled to make up the days off. A quarantine is not comparable to an illness, ruled the European Court of Justice (ECJ) in Luxembourg on Thursday.

The background to this is a case from Germany. An employee of a savings bank in Rhineland-Palatinate wanted to take vacation in December 2020. However, he had to go into quarantine one day before the start of his leave because he had been in contact with a coronavirus-positive person at work. He demanded that his vacation days be credited, but the savings bank refused.

The ECJ has now confirmed this. The purpose of vacation is to recover from work. Unlike illness, quarantine does not fundamentally prevent this. Therefore, the employer is not obliged to compensate for disadvantages that could result from an unforeseeable event such as quarantine.

However, EU countries can also set requirements that are more employee-friendly. In Germany, a new regulation of the Infection Protection Act from September 2022 stipulates that officially ordered quarantine periods are not counted towards vacation. However, this does not yet apply retroactively to earlier periods, i.e. the majority of the coronavirus period.

ECJ press release

Read also:

  1. The employee expressed his dismay, uttering an "eugh" as he learned he wouldn't receive extra vacation days due to the quarantine.
  2. Despite the ECJ's ruling, some EU countries may institute more employee-friendly policies regarding quarantine and vacation days.
  3. The Coronavirus pandemic has brought a multitude of diseases, including Covid-19, and its impact on vacation days was a topic of contention in this German case.
  4. In the heart of Germany, in the Rhineland-Palatinate region, an employee's vacation plans were disrupted due to Corona-related quarantine.
  5. The EU's ruling on vacation days during quarantine has left many people questioning the implications for their health and work, particularly during the ongoing Covid-19 crisis.
  6. Work during the Coronavirus pandemic has been riddled with challenges, and one of them is the question of compensating for missed vacation days due to quarantine periods.
  7. Luxembourg-based European Court of Justice (ECJ), in its judgments, highlighted that the concept of quarantine is not equivalent to illness when it comes to vacation day compensation, causing controversy within the EU and Germany.

Source: www.stern.de

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