§1 What is (or not) covered?

As indicated in Article 1(2) of the Working time Directive, it applies to: ‘[…] (a) minimum periods of daily rest, weekly rest and annual leave, to breaks and maximum weekly working time; (b) and certain aspects of night work, shift work and patterns of work.’ A contrario, this means that the ‘statutory’ working time of workers, i.e. the legal duration of the working week above which employers often have to pay overtime, is not governed by the Directive and is left to the Member States while respecting the maximum limit to the average weekly working time set out in Article 6 of the Directive (See Chapter VI). The Working Time Directive also does not deal with the issue of remuneration, including the level of salaries and the methods of remuneration and various pay rates which can be established at national level (92). The Court has held that this was clear from both the purpose and the wording of the Directive’s provisions. It is also an unambiguous consequence of Article 153(5) of the Treaty on the functioning of the European Union (93). The only exception to this principle recognised by the Court is that of the pay which must be ensured during the workers’ annual leave (see Chapter VII).

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Source: EUR-Lex (Cellar) · retrieved 2026-09-07