Top EU court backs employees' rights to paid holiday

Employees in the European Union who fail to take their annual leave do not automatically lose their right to it, nor their entitlement to being compensated for those days if they quit the job, the European Union's top court ruled Tuesday.

However, this does not apply to workers who have "deliberately and knowingly refrained" from taking their paid annual leave, despite being given the opportunity to do so, the Luxembourg-based judges concluded.

The decision relates to two German cases brought by a legal trainee working for the state of Berlin and a man employed by the Max Planck Society, a leading research organization.

Both failed to take their full holiday allowance and were refused a payout for the remaining days when they left their jobs. The two German courts hearing the cases turned to the European Court of Justice (ECJ) for help in interpreting EU rules.

"EU law precludes a worker from automatically losing the days of paid annual leave to which he was entitled ... solely because he did not apply for leave," the court found, according to a statement.

This extends to the right to an allowance in lieu for leave that has not been taken, the statement added.

However, the judges argued that those rights may lapse "if the employer actually gave the worker the opportunity ... to take the leave days at issue in good time."

In a separate ruling on another German case, the ECJ found that the heirs of an employee who died without taking their full annual leave are entitled to a payout for the unclaimed holiday days.