Travel to employer-set sites counts as working time, ECJ rules

The Court of Justice (Sixth Chamber) held on 22 October 2026, in Case C-420/24, that travel time — even outside normal hours — to and from an employer-set workplace other than the fixed or usual one, to perform duties under the employer's instructions, is “working time” under Article 2(1) of Directive 2003/88/ECEuropa. The Court gave no substantive ruling on counting travel toward overtime thresholdsEuropa: it held the second question — whether EU law precludes the national non-counting rule — inadmissibleEuropa.

The claimant, BZ, headed the investments, major repairs and catastrophes service of the Iași regional roads directorate (CNAIR), contractually posted in Iași. From 8 to 15 June 2021 he made repeated inspection trips to road sites at Suceava, Botoșani and Focșani plus the CNAIR head office in Bucharest — more than 1,500 km in eight days on Romanian national and county roads, the area having no motorways, in an employer-provided vehicle (with a driver for Bucharest), returning the same day except after Bucharest, travelling partly outside normal hours. CNAIR refused to validate his time sheet and pay the 31.5 hours, treating the travel as outside his Article 111 activity. The Tribunalul Iași dismissed the claim on 20 July 2022: mission-order times alone were insufficient without an activity report or logbook, and the agreed procedure required workers first to seek compensatory rest before claiming overtime pay. The union appealed to the Curtea de Apel Iași.

On admissibility, the Court rejected CNAIR's objections: Union interpretation is presumed relevant, and the pay dispute first requires settling the travel time's legal nature. On substance, the Court applied the three cumulative elements of Article 2(1), each for the referring court to verify. First, exercising his activity: instructions fixed destination and arrangements, with mission orders and logbook checks, so travel was inseparably linked to his duties. Second, at the employer's disposal: he could change neither date nor destination and had no free disposal of his time, even with a driver — work intensity is irrelevant. Third, at work: such travel is inherent in normal duties where regular missions, site controls and off-site meetings form part of contractual functions, keeping the worker from his social and family setting with little latitude over non-engaged time. Outside normal hours changes nothing; the directive admits no intermediate category.

These are autonomous Union concepts serving the directive's health-and-safety purpose, and Article 2 permits no derogation. The Court followed its travel-time authority STAS-IV (C-110/24 of 9 October 2025) and the on-call ruling Ramavić (C-373/24 of 30 October 2025), cited by analogy, plus the earlier Federación de Servicios Privados ruling (C-266/14 of 10 September 2015) on workers without a fixed workplace: a contractual fixed post does not take employer-ordered travel outside working time.

The second question failed at the threshold: the reference order gave no reason why Article 6(b) average time or Charter Article 31(2) matteredEuropa, as Article 94(c) requires. The judgment therefore cannot be cited for counting travel toward the 48-hour average or for any Charter pay claimEuropa. For employers sending inspectors, technicians or client-site staff away from their contractual workplace, such employer-directed travel qualifies as working timeEuropa and engages the directive's protections, whatever internal compensatory-rest-first procedures sayEuropa; mission orders, employer transport and logbook control all point toward qualification, while pay remains governed by national lawEuropa. Legal basis: Article 2(1) of Directive 2003/88/EC of 4 November 2003; the Article 6(b) and Charter Article 31(2) question was ruled inadmissibleEuropa.