In the midst of the vacation season, many employers in Germany are prompted to address old and new questions surrounding the issue of vacation. This Insight series, "On your marks! Get set! Vacation!" is designed to help employers keep track of recurring issues and answer important questions about German leave law. In Part 2, we look at the:

Must-Knows in the Current Employment Relationship

Question 1: Do employees have to be informed about existing vacation entitlements?

Yes! Otherwise, a forfeiture of the employees’ (remaining) vacation entitlements is virtually impossible.

According to the case law of the European Court of Justice (ECJ) and the Federal Labor Court (BAG), employers are obliged to ask their employees to take their vacation. Vacation not taken no longer expires automatically on December 31 of the vacation year or by March 31 of the following year. Rather, employers must have enabled their employees to actually take the vacation in good time beforehand (for a detailed description of the employer's obligations to cooperate, see our blog post "Please take your vacation"). Employers should therefore:

• not only request their employees take their vacation in good time in the respective vacation year (i.e., the current calendar year), but also
• check in good time whether their employees may still be entitled to remaining vacation from the previous year and request that they take their vacation by March 31, pointing out that vacation entitlements may otherwise be...

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