Hearing on the application of the Working Time Directive (WTD) in the armed forces

At a high-level hearing organised by the European Commission (DG EMPL and DG DEFIS), CESI presented its views on the application of the Working Time Directive (WTD) to military personnel across the European Union.

Secretary General Klaus Heeger delivered a comprehensive position outlining CESI’s long-standing commitment to ensuring fair, safe and sustainable working conditions for members of the armed forces. On behalf of CESI´s Expert Commission “Security and Defence”, Walter Hirsch, Eurofedop, highlighted specific difficulties encountered by the armed forces. Both emphasised that the WTD is a fundamental health and safety instrument that fully applies to armed forces personnel, except in narrowly defined exceptional circumstances.

“Protecting the health and well-being of servicewomen and servicemen is not an obstacle to operational effectiveness — it is a prerequisite for it”, Heeger stressed during the hearing. And Walter Hirsch underlined that “the WTD is well-designed and operational, if applied consistently and correctly, also in the spirit of the case-law of the European Court of Justice”.

The CESI delegation pointed out a number of challenges observed at Member States´ level, including excessive use of exemptions, limited access to compensatory rest, a lack of systematic working-time recording, and the improper use of long reference periods. These problems do not stem from the Directive itself, but from inconsistent national implementation.

Rather than revising the WTD, CESI calls on the Commission to provide clear EU-level guidelines, strengthen monitoring and enforcement, and promote reliable, digital working-time recording systems within the armed forces. CESI also stresses the fundamental importance of a wider and more structured social dialogue in the defence sector, ensuring that representative military associations are properly involved.

The event was part of a steady and constructive dialogue between the Commission and the social partners.

A detailed written statement that CESI submitted to the European Commission on the subject matter is available here.

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