In 2019 a Spanish trade union changed the rules of working time tracking for the entire European Union. The case is officially Case C-55/18, Federación de Servicios de Comisiones Obreras (CCOO) v. Deutsche Bank SAE. The court was the European Court of Justice. The ruling, handed down on 14 May 2019, said something deceptively simple: every EU member state must require employers to record the daily working time of every worker. Member states that don't require this are in breach of the Working Time Directive.
In the years since, national courts and legislators have had to respond to this case. Spain anticipated it with Royal Decree-Law 8/2019, Germany's Federal Labour Court built its 2022 ruling on it, and Denmark legislated a recording duty in 2024.
This post walks through what the case actually decided, why it matters, what "objective, reliable, accessible" means in practice, and what the ruling has so far failed to settle.
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The Facts of the Case
CCOO is a major Spanish trade union. On 26 July 2017, it brought a collective action against Deutsche Bank SAE (the Spanish subsidiary of Deutsche Bank), arguing that the bank should be required to operate a daily working-time record for all employees. CCOO argued that without such a record, there was no way to verify compliance with the agreed working hours or to give union representatives the monthly overtime figures Spanish law requires.
Spanish law at the time only required employers to record overtime, not regular hours. The bank's position was simple: it complied with Spanish law as written, so the case had no basis.
The Spanish National High Court (Audiencia Nacional) referred the question to the European Court of Justice: does the Working Time Directive (2003/88/EC), read with the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the EU, require member states to oblige employers to record daily working hours, even when domestic law doesn't?
The Court's Answer
In its judgment of 14 May 2019, the Grand Chamber of the ECJ said: yes.
The key passage:
"Member States must require employers to set up an objective, reliable and accessible system enabling the duration of time worked each day by each worker to be measured."
The court's reasoning rested on three points:
1. The Rights Cannot Be Verified Without Records
The directive guarantees a 48-hour average cap, 11 hours of daily rest and 24 hours of weekly rest. None of these guarantees can be checked unless the working time is actually recorded. Without records, the rights are theoretical.
2. Without Records, Workers Bear an Impossible Burden of Proof
When a worker claims overtime or a rest violation, they typically have to prove it. Without an employer-maintained record, that proof is nearly impossible. The court noted that other evidence, such as witness statements or emails, cannot establish the hours objectively and reliably, and that colleagues may be reluctant to testify against the employer because the worker is the weaker party in the employment relationship.
3. EU Law Requires Effective Protection
Article 31(2) of the Charter of Fundamental Rights guarantees every worker the right to a limit on maximum working hours and to daily and weekly rest. The court held that this right is effectively void without measurement.
What "Objective, Reliable and Accessible" Actually Means
The court used three adjectives but did not define them. What follows is a practical reading, not the court's own words.
Objective
The record cannot rely on the employee's voluntary memory at the end of the day. It must capture the actual time worked, not an estimate. A note that says "worked from morning to evening" is not objective; a record with start and end times is.
In practice, this argues against spreadsheets that employees fill in two weeks after the fact from memory. It allows time tracking software, time clocks, and pen-and-paper recording done daily and reviewed by the employer.
Reliable
The record must be trustworthy. Edits should be traceable. The system must not allow silent rewrites that erase yesterday's overtime. In a labor inspection, the record has to be defensible.
Audit logs and edit timestamps (features of Timesheet's Business plan) both serve this requirement.
Accessible
Both workers and labor authorities must be able to access the record. Workers should be able to see their own hours; labor inspectors should be able to demand the records and receive them in usable form.
A locked Excel file on the manager's laptop is not accessible. A reporting interface that workers can read and that exports to PDF or CSV is.
What the Court Did Not Say
The ruling has clear limits. It did not specify:
- What technology to use. A paper logbook can comply, as can a state-of-the-art mobile app. The court was neutral on form.
- How granular the record must be. "Daily working time" was clearly required; the court did not require minute-by-minute logging, project-by-project breakdowns, or break-by-break detail.
- Who pays for the system. The court did not regulate costs. It did reject cost objections, holding that worker protection should not be subordinated to purely economic considerations.
- Penalties for non-compliance. The court ruled on what is required; member states set the consequences.
- The interaction with "trust-based" work models. The court left the door open: working hours must be recorded, but how to reconcile that with cultures of flexibility is for national law to define. Member states may take account of the sector and the size of the business, and the Article 17(1) derogation for workers who set their own hours remains available.
National Implementations: Who Did What and When
Spain (ahead of the ruling)
Spain had already legislated independently: Royal Decree-Law 8/2019 was approved on 8 March 2019 and made daily time recording mandatory from 12 May 2019, two days before the ECJ judgment of 14 May 2019. The decree requires every employer in Spain to record the daily start and end of work for every employee, retain records for four years, and make them accessible to workers, their representatives, and labor inspectors. See the dedicated post on Spain's time tracking law.
Germany (delayed)
Germany did not legislate immediately. The Federal Labor Court (BAG) issued ruling 1 ABR 22/21 on 13 September 2022, holding that German employers were already obliged to record working time, derived from Section 3(2)(1) of the Occupational Health and Safety Act read in the light of CCOO. No amendment to the Arbeitszeitgesetz has been passed; as of October 2026 the government had not yet adopted a bill. See the post on the Arbeitszeitgesetz.
Greece (2022)
Greece's Law 4808/2021 introduced a digital work card that records each worker's start and end of work electronically. It was activated in 2022 for banks and supermarkets with over 250 employees and is being extended sector by sector.
France (still patchy)
France has not enacted a CCOO-specific reform. French law already requires employers to record each employee's daily start and end times, or hours worked, where staff do not all work the same posted collective schedule (Article D3171-8 of the Code du travail). For employees on a forfait jours (an annual day-count arrangement used heavily for managers), only the days worked are counted (Article D3171-10).
Italy (limited reform)
Italy already required working-time records before CCOO: the Libro Unico del Lavoro must show the hours each employee works each day (Article 39 of Decree-Law 112/2008).
Other Member States
Most member states already required employers to record working time before the ruling, among them the Netherlands, Poland, Hungary, Czechia, Slovakia and Finland. In its 2023 implementation report, the European Commission listed five with no clear general obligation: Belgium, Denmark, Cyprus, Malta and Sweden. Denmark has since introduced one (in force since 1 July 2024, with records kept for five years). The Commission concluded that the challenge of responding to the recording case law had "not yet been addressed widely".
What This Means for Employers
If you operate in any EU member state, regardless of whether your country has passed CCOO-specific legislation, the legal landscape now expects you to:
- Record the daily working time of every employee. Start time, end time, and pauses. Salaried employees, hourly employees, and managers covered by the directive all need a record.
- Maintain the records reliably. Edits should be traceable, the data should be tamper-evident.
- Make the records accessible. Workers should be able to see their own hours; labor inspectors should be able to obtain the records on demand.
- Retain the records. National retention periods vary (two years in Germany, four years in Spain, five years in Denmark), so check the rule in each country where you employ staff.
The CCOO ruling is binding EU law, but inspectors and courts enforce it through national law, so the details still differ by country.
How Timesheet Maps to CCOO
The CCOO ruling does not certify products. But the requirements map cleanly onto features that Timesheet provides:
- Objective: every entry carries concrete start and end times, captured live from timers, automations (NFC, Wi-Fi, geofence), or explicit user input.
- Reliable: the audit log on the Business plan records every change with timestamp and user; the data is hosted on European infrastructure.
- Accessible: workers see their own hours in the mobile and web apps; PDF and Excel exports satisfy labor inspector requests in any common format.
For the day-to-day setup, see the posts on HR warnings and working time targets.
Common Questions
Does CCOO apply to me as a freelancer? The ruling is about the employment relationship. Genuinely self-employed people fall outside, though keeping a freelance timesheet remains standard practice for billing. False self-employment (people misclassified as freelancers when they are de facto employees) can be challenged by labor authorities and courts; in such cases the CCOO duty would apply to the employer.
My country has not passed CCOO-specific legislation. Am I exempt? Not necessarily. The ruling binds member states, and national courts must interpret existing national law in line with it as far as possible, even changing their established case law. Germany's Federal Labour Court did exactly that in 2022, without a new statute.
What if my country has the Article 22 opt-out? The opt-out applies to the 48-hour weekly cap, not to the recording duty. Employers in countries that use the opt-out (for example Malta, Cyprus, Bulgaria and Estonia, which allow it in any sector) still need to record working time, and Article 22 itself requires up-to-date records of every worker who has opted out. The 48-hour average simply stops applying to those workers; rest periods still apply.
Can I rely on employee-managed spreadsheets? The court did not ban spreadsheets, but they can fail the "reliable" test in practice. A spreadsheet that an employee can edit retroactively without trace is not reliable.
What about senior executives? Under Article 17(1)(a), the Working Time Directive allows member states to exempt managing executives and others with autonomous decision-taking powers, where their working time is not measured or predetermined. Where a member state uses that exemption, the recording duty does not bind. Where it does not (and the Court of Justice reads derogations strictly), the duty applies.
Summary
- ECJ Case C-55/18, 14 May 2019, ruled that EU law requires every member state to mandate working time recording for all employees
- The system must be objective, reliable, and accessible
- Spain had already mandated daily recording days before the ruling, Germany's Federal Labour Court applied it in 2022, and in 2023 the Commission still found several member states without a clear recording duty
- The ruling does not specify technology or granularity, only that daily working time must be measurable
- Employers should record start, end, and pauses for every employee, retain the data, and make it accessible
Sources
- Case C-55/18 (CCOO) on curia.europa.eu
- ECJ press release CP 61/19 of 14 May 2019
- Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union, Article 31
- Directive 2003/88/EC on eur-lex.europa.eu
- European Commission, Report on the implementation of the Working Time Directive, COM(2023) 72, and staff working document SWD(2023) 40
Where to Go Next
- The EU Working Time Directive explained for the directive the ruling interprets
- Germany's Arbeitszeitgesetz and the time tracking duty for one major national response
- Spain's time tracking law: Royal Decree-Law 8/2019 for the daily recording duty Spain adopted just before the ruling