Work-life balance: European Commission decides to refer Ireland to the Court of Justice of the European Union for failing to fully transpose EU rules

The European Commission decided to refer Ireland, Belgium and Spain to the Court of Justice of the European Union for failing to notify national measures fully transposing EU rights on Work-Life Balance for parents and carers (Directive (EU) 2019/158).

The Work-Life Balance Directive, adopted in 2019, is an important legislation which aims to enable working parents to better reconcile professional and private lives. The deadline for transposition of the provisions of the Work-life Balance Directive into national law was 2 August 2022. In September 2022, the Commission sent letters of formal notice to 19 Member States who had not communicated the complete transposition of the Directive. In April 2023, the Commission sent reasoned opinions to 11 Member States who were yet to notify full national transposition measures. Belgium, Ireland and Spain have still not communicated transposition measures. Since the cases concern the failure to communicate transposition measures of a legislative directive, the Commission will ask the Court of Justice of the European Union to impose financial sanctions on those Member States. 

More details are available in the full European Commission press release.

Further, the European Commission also called today on Ireland and 11 other member states to comply with EU law in relation to air pollution and to reduce their emissions of several pollutants to cut air pollution. The Commission issued letters of reasoned opinion to the member states for failure to ensure correct implementation of their reduction commitments for several air pollutants as required by Directive 2016/2284 on the reduction of national emissions of certain atmospheric pollutants (‘NEC Directive').

More information:

November 2023 Infringements

Infringement procedure

Q&A on infringement procedure