Entitlement to Paid Annual Leave in the Czech Legal System and the Case Law of the Court of Justice of the European Union

Workers are dismissed from their jobs in countries across the European Union (and not only) every day. Understandably, some workers defend themselves against such dismissals in ways that national law allows them to, and they are often successful. However, the path from dismissal to that dismissal being declared unfair (void) can be thorny and long. Case law in the Czech Republic, as is also the situation in other countries, has already adjudicated on employment claims arising in cases of unfair dismissal. Thus, over time, the case law of the Czech national courts has taken the view that, in the special “period of uncertainty,” that is, the period from the contested legal action by which the employee is dismissed until the final decision of the court, relations of employment cannot be governed by a contract of employment, a collective agreement, internal regulations, or the relevant labor law, as those relations had continued unchanged. Therefore, during that period the employee is not entitled to compensation for wages or salary for leave not taken under the Czech Labor Code. However, this interpretation is not consistent with the interpretation of Article 7 of Directive 2003/88/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 4 November 2003 concerning certain aspects of the organization of working time and the (recent) case-law of the Court of Justice of the European Union. According to the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU), a worker who has been unlawfully dismissed from his/her employment and subsequently reinstated in accordance with national law, following a judicial decision annulling his/her dismissal is entitled to financial compensation for untaken paid annual leave for the period from the date of his/her unlawful dismissal until the date of reinstatement. This article focuses on the recent case law of the CJEU concerning the right to annual paid leave, not only in the context of the unlawful dismissal of an employee, and on the implications of this case law for Czech national practice. Thus, the central theme of the paper is a reasoned finding of the law on entitlement to financial compensation for untaken leave in light of national and supranational legislation.