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23 ERA F. 1 (2022-2023)

handle is hein.journals/erafrum23 and id is 1 raw text is: ERA Forum (2022) 23:1-6 https://doi.org/10.1007/s12027-022-00708-7 EDITORIAL Working time: recent case law of the Court of Justice of the European Union Leyre Maiso Fontechal ER Accepted: 21 March 2022 / Published online: 31 March 2022 ©@ ERA 2022 .a'w°TAErgs-a .r The Court of Justice of the European Union has had the opportunity to interpret the scope of the provisions of the Working Time Directive on numerous occasions. The purpose of Directive 2003/88/EC1 on working time is to protect the health and safety of workers. It establishes a maximum average working week of 48 hours for all EU workers and it also regulates paid annual leave, minimum weekly and daily rest periods, rest breaks during the working day, and limits on the length of night work. Two broad areas of case law have emerged: * cases on the calculation of the length of working hours, notably cases involving on-call work; * cases concerning the interpretation of the right to annual paid leave. Although obviously not in all cases, the Court is generally quite progressive in the interpretation of this Directive, through a broad understanding of what is working time as well as the fundamental character of the right to annual paid leave. The five cases presented hereafter were decided in the period between October 2021 and January 2022, adding to the extensive existing case law. Two of them fall within the first category, dealing with the meaning of working time under Article 2 of the Directive, whereas the other three fall within the second category, on the interpretation of the right to annual paid leave under Article 7 of the Directive. 1Directive 2003/88/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 4 November 2003 concerning certain aspects of the organisation of working time. OJ L 299, 18/11/2003 p. 9-19. [ L. Maiso Fontecha lmaiso@era.int 1 Deputy Head of Section European Private Law, ERA, Trier, Germany '_ Springer