Link: https://curia.europa.eu/jcms/upload/docs/application/pdf/2020-04/cp200055en.pdf

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Court of Justice of the European Union

PRESS RELEASE No 55/20

Luxembourg, 30 April 2020
Judgment in Case C-211/19 UO v Készenléti Rendőrség
 
The Working Time Directive applies to officers of the Hungarian Rapid Intervention Police responsible for surveillance of the external borders of the Schengen Area in the context of the migration crisis
 

Thus, except in exceptional circumstances, on-call duties carried out in teams by those officers fall within the scope of that directive

UO is a member of the Rapid Intervention Police in Hungary, a special unit of the Hungarian Police carrying out specific missions, including patrols on the border of Hungary with States not in the Schengen Area. Between July 2015 and April 2017, UO was a member of a border patrol squadron on the borders between Hungary and Serbia, Croatia and Romania, on the Balkan migration route. During that period, he was ordered, with his team, to carry out extraordinary alert duties and on-call duties outside normal working hours.

The Hungarian Rapid Intervention Police treated UO’s on-call periods as rest time, for which the officer received only an on-call supplement. UO considers, however, that, during that period, he was in fact performing an alert duty, outside his normal daily duty hours, which should be classified as ‘working time’, falling within the scope of the Working Time Directive (‘the directive’),1 for which he was entitled to receive an extraordinary duties payment.