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As regards the time when the equivalent compensatory rest has to be granted, the Court has clarified this obligation as regards daily rest, stating that it must follow on immediately from the working time which it is supposed to counteract (395) since the periods of rest ‘must not only be consecutive but must also directly follow a period of work’ (396). Indeed, ‘in order to ensure the worker’s safety and to protect his health effectively, provision must as a general rule be made for a period of work regularly to alternate with a rest period’ (397). On the contrary, ‘a series of periods of work completed without the interpolation of the necessary rest time may, in a given case, cause damage to the worker or at the very least threaten to overtax his physical capacities, thus endangering his health and safety with the result that a rest period granted subsequent to those periods is not such as correctly to ensure the protection of the interests at issue’ (398).
Source: EUR-Lex (Cellar) · retrieved 2026-09-25 · Text as adopted (Official Journal); later amendments are not incorporated in this text.