Suche
Mein Konto
Parental leave and vacation: This is how much you are really entitled to!
Find out about vacation entitlements during parental leave and current rulings by the Federal Labor Court on cuts and compensation.
Parental leave and vacation: This is how much you are really entitled to!
On September 14, 2025, a recent decision by the Federal Labor Court (BAG) will bring new clarity regarding the vacation entitlement of employees on parental leave. According to the information from Craft sheet Employers must ensure that employees who take parental leave only have their annual leave reduced by one twelfth for each full calendar month of absence. In concrete terms, this means that an employee who, for example, goes on parental leave on August 16th and remains absent until October 15th will not have any vacation deducted for the months of August and October. Employers are only allowed to reduce the entitlement for September, the full calendar month.
The Federal Labor Court had made it clear in an earlier ruling that an employer could wrongly assume that there is no entitlement to vacation during the entire absence. This clarification could benefit many workers who find themselves in similar situations.
Vacation compensation after termination of the employment relationship
Another important decision concerns the vacation entitlements of employees who leave working life after parental leave. As the Haufe reported, an employer can no longer reduce employees' vacation entitlements if these have been transferred to a compensatory entitlement. For example, a former employee claimed almost 25,000 euros in vacation compensation after she left at the end of 2020 after spending several years on parental leave. In her case, too, the annual leave of 29 working days had not expired and claims from the period of maternity and parental leave were still outstanding.
The BAG decided that vacation entitlements during maternity and parental leave accrue in full and do not expire. The employer's daughter had not submitted the necessary declaration of reduction, which meant that the vacation entitlements could not be reduced. This means that the entitlement to compensation remains intact even if the employee has not received any remuneration in the last 13 weeks before the termination of the employment relationship.
In light of these rulings, employers should ensure that employees' vacation entitlements during and after parental leave are handled correctly in order to avoid legal disputes.