SPAIN Trends and Developments Contributed by: Jacobo Martínez, Juan Alonso and Luis Aguilar Romera, Eversheds Sutherland Spain
of whether time spent by employees travelling from their home to the first client and from the last client back home qualifies as effective working time. The Court reiterates that the case law of the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU), particularly the Tyco judgment, is not automatically applicable to all situations because such judgement was ruled tak - ing into account the special situations of the case. Where the specific conditions established in Tyco are not met, such travel time must be carefully analysed, assessing, among other things, the employee’s free - dom to carry out other activities during the trip and/or whether the employee is at disposal of the company during this trip. Depending on these situations, the travelling time could be considered (or not) effective working time. The Tyco judgment, CJEU, 10 September 2015, Case C-266/14, defined “working time” under Article 2 (1) of Directive 2003/88/EC by identifying three cumula - tive criteria: • the employee must carry out their activity or duties; • the employee must be at the employer’s disposal during that time; and • the employee must remain at work throughout the period in question. In that case, the Court stated that, where these con - ditions are not satisfied, domestic law applies. Spe - cifically, Article 34.5 of the Spanish Workers’ Statute, which provides that working time shall be computed from the starting to the end of the working day at the employee’s place of work. In the case at hand, the Supreme Court held that the travel time in question could not be considered effec - tive working time for all legal purposes (eg, remunera - tion, overtime), based on the following considerations, which are different from the Tyco case: • The company had neither closed its regional offices nor reassigned all employees to centralised headquarters. Therefore, the factual scenario did not reflect the circumstances of the Tyco case, nor those addressed in prior Supreme Court judgments
(Judgment 605/2020, of 7 July; and Judgment 617/2021, of 9 June). • There was no evidence that employees were required to travel distances of up to 100 kilometres. • No discriminatory treatment was found among employees in comparable situations lacking objec - tive and proportionate justification. • The company had not altered the manner in which services were rendered, and had consistently excluded travel time from local offices to client sites (and return) from being treated as working time. Accordingly, the Court reaffirmed the legal doctrine previously established in its judgments of 1 December 2015 (Case 284/2014) and 4 December 2018 (Case 188/2017), concluding that the Tyco’s special circum - stances were not fulfilled. Consequently, national law applies. Under Article 34.5 of the Workers’ Statute, the working day is deemed to commence upon the employee’s arrival at the des - ignated workplace, thereby excluding home-to-client and client-to-home travel for remuneration purpos - es. However, this ruling should not be automatically extrapolated to other cases and an analysis of the specific circumstances of each case must be carried out. Extension of maternity/paternity leave Royal Decree-Law 9/2025 enacted on July 29th has extended maternity/paternity leave, aiming to guaran - tee equality, shared responsibility, and the protection of maternity, in order to adapt these rights to new family structures and to comply with European regula - tions in this area. The duration of maternity leave (referred to as leave for birth and care) will be 19 weeks for the biological mother (instead of 16 weeks as ruled under the former legislation). In the case of single-parent families, the leave is extended to 32 weeks. Such leave can be taken as follows: • Six weeks are mandatory and must be taken immediately after childbirth, on a full-time basis.
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