On 26 September 2024, the Court of Justice handed down its judgment in Case C‑164/23, VOLÁNBUSZ Zrt. v Bács-Kiskun Vármegyei Kormányhivatal, on the interpretation of Article 9(3) of Regulation (EC) No 561/2006. The request has been made in proceedings between VOLÁNBUSZ Zrt. (“Volánbusz”), a private limited public transport company in Hungary, and Bács-Kiskun Vármegyei Kormányhivatal (Bács-Kiskun County Government Offices) concerning the legality of a warning issued to that company for breach of the obligation to record the working time of the drivers that it employs.

Following several checks, the Bács-Kiskun County Government Offices found that, for 67 drivers employed by Volánbusz, the time spent, during March 2022, travelling from their place of residence to that company’s external depots and returning to them at the end of their shift should have been recorded as working time pursuant to the Hungarian Labour Code. After the Bács-Kiskun County Government Offices issued a warning, therefore, Volánbusz brought an action for annulment before the Szegedi Törvényszék (Szeged High Court; the “referring court”) which, in light of the need to interpret the relevant European legislation, decided to stay the proceedings and to ask to the Court of Justice whether Article 9(3) of Regulation No 561/2006 must be interpreted as meaning that the concept of “employer’s operational centre where the driver is normally based” set out in that provision covers a place, such as an external depot for vehicles falling within the scope of that regulation, from which the driver concerned usually carries out his or her shift and to which he or she returns at the end of that shift, in the normal exercise of his or her functions and without specific instructions from his or her employer in that regard. The referring court also asked whether, on the one hand, the presence of sanitary facilities or social or rest areas and, on the other hand, the geographical proximity of that place to the place of residence of that driver are relevant for that purpose.

According to the Court, Article 9(3) of Regulation No 561/2006 does not establish any requirement concerning the presence, at the “employer’s operational centre where the driver is normally based”, of certain facilities such as sanitary facilities or social or rest areas, nor does it require the operational centre being close to that driver’s place of residence. At the same time, it cannot be inferred from that wording whether the above-mentioned concept is the place from which that driver usually carries out his or her shift and to which he or she returns at the end of that shift, in the absence of specific instructions from his or her employer. In light of its origin and of the provision in which it appears, however, that concept corresponds to the “employer’s operating centre”, so that when a driver takes charge of a vehicle falling within the scope of Regulation No 561/2006 at a place which is the “employer’s operational centre where that driver is normally based”, any time that he or she spends driving a vehicle which does not fall within the scope of that regulation to travel to or from that operational centre cannot be classified as “other work” within the meaning of its Article 4(e).

Marco Stillo