§1 Application of the Directive’s provisions to ‘workers’
While the Directive does not contain a specific article setting its personal scope, its operative provisions refer to a ‘worker’ (often to ‘any worker’ or ‘every worker’). This concept of ‘worker’ is not defined in the Directive itself. The accompanying document to the proposal for the 1993 Directive (32) suggested that the definition in the 89/391/EEC Directive (33) would apply, i.e. ‘any person employed by an employer, including trainees and apprentices but excluding domestic servants’. However, the Court has refuted this on the grounds that the Working Time Directive itself made no reference to this provision of Directive 89/391/EEC. It also excluded the application of a definition derived from national legislation and/or practices (34). On the contrary, the Court held that this concept could not be interpreted differently according to the law of Member States but had an autonomous meaning specific to European Union law. It considered that the concept of worker could not be interpreted narrowly (35) and concluded that it ‘must be defined in accordance with objective criteria which distinguish the employment relationship by reference to the rights and duties of the persons concerned. The essential feature of an employment relationship, however, is that for a certain period of time a person performs services for and under the direction of another person in return for which he receives remuneration’ (36). The Court thereby linked the interpretation of ‘worker’ for the purposes of the Working Time Directive to that established by case-law in the context of the free movement of workers as laid down in Article 45 of the Treaty. The Court holds that ‘[i]t is for the national court to apply that concept of a “worker” in any classification, and the national court must base that classification on objective criteria and make an overall assessment of all the circumstances of the case brought before it, having regard both to the nature of the activities concerned and the relationship of the parties involved’ (37). However, it has issued guidance on the application of these criteria and established that the category ‘worker’ under EU law is independent from the national one (38). It has for example held that employees in a body governed by public law qualify as ‘workers’ irrespective of their civil servant status (39). It also reasoned that casual and seasonal staff employed under fixed-term contracts who are not subject to certain provisions of the national labour code fall within the scope of the concept of ‘workers’ (40). The Court has also ruled that the concept of worker could cover a person admitted to a work rehabilitation centre, regardless of the person’s productivity level, the origin of the funds linked to remuneration or the limited amount of remuneration (41). It is not the status of the person under national law that is decisive for the applicability of the Working Time Directive. For example, in Matzak, the Court qualified a volunteer firefighter under Belgian law as ‘worker’ in the meaning of the Directive (42). Instead, the applicability of the Directive will depend on whether the person concerned qualifies as a ‘worker’ according to the EU jurisprudential definition of worker. This is based on aspects of his or her concrete working arrangements, in particular on whether the person performs effective and genuine activities under the direction and supervision of another person and for remuneration. This in turn means that certain persons qualified as ‘self-employed’ under national law could nonetheless be categorised as ‘workers’ by the Court for the purpose of the application of the Working Time Directive (43). The Court indeed held that ‘the classification of a “self-employed person” under national law does not prevent that person being classified as an employee within the meaning of EU law if his independence is merely notional, thereby disguising an employment relationship’ (44). The Court pointed to the following elements as possible indicators of the ‘worker’ qualification: if the person acts under the direction of an employer as regards, in particular, the freedom to choose the time, place and content of his or her work (45), if the person does not share the employer’s commercial risks (46) and if he or she forms an integral part of the employer’s undertaking for the duration of that relationship (47). On the other hand, the choice of the type of work and tasks to be executed and the manner in which they are performed, as well as of the time and place of work, and with more freedom in the recruitment of own staff, are features typically associated with the functions of an independent service provider (48). The Court has held that in order to determine whether a ‘self-employed’ person is to be categorised as a ‘worker’, one should examine whether the ‘independence of that person does not appear to be fictitious and, second, it is not possible to establish the existence of a relationship of subordination between that person and his putative employer’ (49). The same assessment, on the basis of the criteria presented above, could lead to individuals under any form of contractual relationships being categorised as ‘workers’ and therefore being covered by the Working Time Directive.
Source: EUR-Lex (Cellar) · retrieved 2026-09-07