No right to more vacation days due to corona quarantine

ECJ ruling - No right to more vacation days due to corona 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.

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 vacation 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.

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1. Despite the EU's stance, some countries might still provide additional vacation days for employees in quarantine due to the Coronavirus, similar to Germany's new Infection Protection Act regulations from September 2022.
2. The employee, who works in Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany, found himself in quarantine just a day before his planned vacation in December 2020, as he had come into contact with a coronavirus-positive individual at work.
3. The Coronavirus pandemic has brought about numerous challenges, one of which is dealing with the impact of quarantine on vacation days, as recently ruled by the EU's Court of Justice (ECJ) in Luxembourg.
4. The ECJ's judgment was in response to a case filed by an employee seeking the recognition of his quarantine day as a vacation day following a direct contact with a corona-positive individual at work.
5. As per the European Court of Justice's decision, employees under quarantine due to the Coronavirus are not entitled to make up for lost vacation days, as quarantine isn't equated to a disease, causing inconvenience but not generally preventing vacation recovery.
6. The economic impact of the COVID-19 pandemic has extended beyond personal health, engendering debates on the organizational implications of illnesses, mandatory quarantine, and vacation days within workplaces across Europe.
7. The Corona crisis has introduced a multitude of complications to the regulatory frameworks governing vacation days and employee well-being across the EU, with countries like Germany working on policy amendments to cater to the unique challenges posed by modern diseases like Covid-19.

Source: www.stern.de