The European Court of Justice clarifies that employees who have to be quarantined during their vacation are not entitled to additional vacation days. The background is a case from Germany.
Anyone who had to spend their vacation in Corona quarantine is not entitled to make up for the days off. The European Court of Justice (ECJ) ruled in Luxembourg that quarantine is not comparable to an illness.
The background is a case from Germany. An employee at a savings bank in Rhineland-Palatinate wanted to take vacation in December 2020. However, the day before he started, he had to go into quarantine because he had contact with a corona-positive person at work. He asked for his vacation days to be credited, but the savings bank refused.
The ECJ has now confirmed this. The purpose of the vacation is to recover from work. A quarantine – unlike an illness – does not fundamentally contradict this. Therefore, the employer is not obliged to compensate for disadvantages that could arise 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 times, i.e. most of the Corona period.
Source: Stern
