Law n° 41.547 of 22 June 2023 relating to holiday entitlements for private sector employees

The laws of July 2022 made it possible for civil servants, State employees or local authority employees to donate days of leave to a colleague who is caring for a sick or disabled child, who has been the victim of an accident or who is helping a relative who is losing his or her independence or who is disabled. (Law no. 1.527 of 7 July 2022 amending Law no. 975 of 12 July 1975, and Law no. 1.538 of 16 December 2022 amending Law no. 1.096 of 7 August 1986).

Since Law no. 1.547 of 22 June 2023, this possibility has also been open to private sector employees.

At their request and in agreement with the employer, without their identity being made known to the beneficiary, a private sector employee may permanently give up all or part of his or her untaken days of leave to another employee without consideration.

The employee benefiting from this gift must be in one of the situations listed in the Law, i.e. :

– who exercises parental authority over or assumes responsibility for a child suffering from a particularly serious illness, disability or accident making a sustained presence and constraining care indispensable;

– in the event of the death of: his/her child under the age of twenty-five; his/her spouse; his/her partner in a cohabitation contract; or the child under the age of twenty-five of the said spouse or said partner, living under the same roof as the beneficiary ;

– who helps a close relative suffering from a particularly serious loss of autonomy or who has a disability, when this relative is, for the beneficiary of the donation, one of those defined by sovereign ordinance.

The employee who is the beneficiary of one or more days donated will continue to be paid during the period of absence. The days of leave donated will not be calculated on the basis of the salary of the employee donating the days.

He will retain all the benefits acquired prior to his period of absence. However, this period of absence will not be treated as actual work for the purposes of estimating the duration of paid leave.

The employee may only give up his fifth week of paid leave and not the first four.