The French High Court of Justice made another reversal in its case law on September 10th, 2025.
Until now, the French High Court (Court of Cassation) considered that paid leave was not equivalent to actual working time and therefore did not have to be taken into account when calculating the threshold for triggering overtime.
Following the case law of the European Court of Justice, the Court of Cassation now considers that, for employees subject to weekly working time calculations (i.e. 35 hours per week), paid leave days must be taken into account when calculating the threshold for triggering overtime.
For example, an employee subject to the statutory weekly working hours, i.e. 7 hours per day and 35 hours per week, who works 32 hours between Monday and Thursday and takes paid leave on Friday, will be considered to have worked 39 hours for that week (32 hours + 7 hours). The employee will therefore be paid for 4 hours’ overtime.
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