The Matzak judgment of the CJEU: The concept of worker and the blurring frontiers of work and rest time

Abstract

The CJEU’S Matzak judgment raises diverse and important questions concerning (not only) working time regulation in the European Union. The present special issue sheds light on some of these questions, more specifically with regard to the Working Time Directive‘s personal scope as well as the notions of working time and rest time under EU law. The Directive’s scope is linked to the concept of worker and the criteria to construct it and, in the context of the Matzak case, leads to interesting questions about the position of volunteers in EU law and the problem of concurrent contracts. In this respect, exploring a purposive approach attending to the health and safety aims of the Directive may be fruitful. The boundaries between working time and rest time are far from clear, especially in situations of stand-by and on call time. Here the proposal of an intermediate category related to the idea of quality of rest time is discussed.