The European Court of Justice ("ECJ") issued a landmark ruling in 2019 that obligated EU Member States to require employers to establish an objective, reliable, and accessible system for recording the hours worked each day by employees (i.e., a daily working time registry). Following the ECJ decision, EU countries that did not already require employers to record daily working time needed to adopt or modify legislation or otherwise account for the decision. Our June 2019 White Paper discussed the ECJ Decision and its impacts on EU Member States.

More than one year on, this White Paper updates our previous examination of the ECJ decision and discusses the steps EU Member States have taken to implement the ECJ decision, whether through legislation or court decisions. It makes clear that employers in the EU should be particularly cautious to ensure their compliance with legal requirements to monitor employees' daily working time. Such requirements can prove difficult to implement in practice, particularly given rapidly evolving work practices and the current COVID-19 crisis, whereby most EU Member States encourage or even obligate companies to implement remote work.