The EU Working Time Directive: What It Means for Compliance

Before 2019, time tracking was mostly about knowing who worked on what and for how long. Helpful? Definitely. Required by law? Not always.

Then, a Spanish trade union challenged Deutsche Bank in court for not recording work hours properly. The case escalated to the European Court of Justice, and the ruling was crystal clear: EU employers must track daily working hours using a system that’s reliable, objective, and easy to access.

This legal requirement ties back to the European Union’s Working Time Directive — legislation that’s been around since the ’90s to ensure employees get proper rest and paid leave and aren’t clocking 70-hour weeks without anyone noticing.

Today, we break down what the EU Working Time Directive means for EU employers and how you can prepare for and comply with this legislation. We’ll show you which laws apply in which country and how to comply, step by step.

TL;DR — Key Takeaways

• The EU Working Time Directive limits working hours and enforces rest periods to protect employee health and safety. It includes rules like a 48-hour average workweek, 11 consecutive hours of daily rest, and mandatory breaks after six hours of work.
• Each EU country applies the directive differently, so employers must follow local laws. For example, Spain requires companies to store time records for four years, while Greece uses a real-time Digital Work Card linked to a government platform.
• A compliant time tracking system supports local rules, employee access, and GDPR standards. Look for tools with customizable settings, strong data encryption, and clear audit trails that align with EU data protection laws.
• Internal audits and regular reporting catch issues early and prepare for inspections. Monthly reviews and automated reports highlight missing entries, overtime risks, and break compliance gaps.
• Time tracking laws also apply outside the EU, and global teams must adapt by country. For example, the US, Canada, and Australia have different record-keeping lengths and overtime definitions, so international companies need flexible tracking tools.

The EU Working Time Directive explained

The EU Working Time Directive was introduced in 1993 as Directive 93/104/EC and later updated in 2003 under Directive 2003/88/EC. Its primary aim is to protect workers’ health and safety by regulating working hours and ensuring adequate rest periods.

Key provisions of the directive include:

• Maximum average working week: 48 hours, including overtime, averaged over a reference period of up to four months.
• Daily rest period: At least 11 consecutive hours in a 24-hour period.
• Weekly rest period: A minimum of 24 uninterrupted hours per seven-day period in addition to the daily rest.
• Rest breaks: A break during working hours for workers on duty for more than six hours.
• Paid annual leave: At least four weeks per year.
• Night shifts: Night workers must not exceed eight hours of work in any 24 hours, on average, for roles involving special hazards or heavy physical or mental strain.

These standards promote work-life balance and support employee well-being.

Following this ruling, countries like Spain and Greece have taken specific steps:

• 🇪🇸 Spain: Implemented Royal Decree-Law 8/2019, mandating daily recording of working hours for all employees. Employers must keep these records for four years, making them available to employees, unions, and labor inspectors.
• 🇬🇷 Greece: Introduced the Digital Work Card system under Law 4808/2021, requiring real-time recording of working hours, integrated with the ERGANI II information system. This system improves transparency and ensures compliance with labor regulations.

How does the EU time tracking law apply to different countries?

Ever since the EU Working Time Directive was implemented, various countries within the EU have begun incorporating it into their labor laws or adapting it to suit their specific use cases. Here’s a glance at some EU countries with their legal requirements and fines for non-compliance.

Country	Implementation Highlights
Spain	Mandatory daily time tracking since May 12, 2019 (Royal Decree-Law 8/2019). Employers must record start/end times and breaks. Records kept for 4 years. Proposals to reduce workweek to 37.5 hours by end of 2025 pending approval.
Greece	Digital Work Card system under Law 4808/2021. Real-time recording integrated with ERGANI II. Implementation expanding by sector. Non-compliance leads to fines.
Germany	Working Hours Act (Arbeitszeitgesetz) requires tracking start and end times. Legislation being updated post-2019 ECJ ruling. Flexibility allowed via collective agreements.
France	35-hour standard workweek, max 48 hours with overtime. Employers must maintain working hour records. Details may vary by collective agreements.
Netherlands	Working Hours Act (Arbeidstijdenwet) mandates tracking of actual hours and overtime. 48-hour weekly average over 16 weeks. Special rules for night workers and minors.

How to comply with the European Working Time Directive

It’s a no-brainer. You want to give your employees the work-life balance they deserve while complying with the law. But how? Here are some practical ways to abide by the legislation.

Understand your country’s specific requirements

The EWTD is merely a set of guidelines, and each member country is responsible for putting them into practice through national legislation.

For example, Spain requires all companies to maintain daily time-tracking records for employees, including start and end times, as well as breaks. Employers must keep these records for four years and make them available to workers, unions, and labor inspectors on request.

On the other hand, Germany is currently updating its laws to comply with the 2019 ECJ ruling. While the existing Working Hours Act already requires time tracking in many cases, newer proposals are moving toward mandatory recording of start and end times for all employees. There is still some flexibility under their current agreements.

Implement compliant time tracking systems

There are countless time tracking solutions out there, and you should choose one that works with the EWTD and your country’s laws. Look for tools with the following features:

• The ability to keep accurate records of workdays, rest periods, and overtime.
• Break and rest period logging to comply with your country’s minimum standards.
• Compliance with the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) if you handle employee data in the EU (even if your company HQ is based outside of it). This includes data encryption, secure access controls, and clear data retention policies.
• Customizable rules by country. In addition to the standard features, such as timesheets, the tool should be easy to customize based on local laws.
• Employee self-access. This allows every team member to review the number of hours worked and supports audits or disputes if they arise.

Educate your workforce about compliance

Even the best system falls short if employees don’t understand how to use it or why it’s important in the first place. Training your team is just as important as implementing employee time tracking. Try:

• Offering clear training sessions to your entire team. Explain the legal obligations and highlight that the system is there to protect their rights and not intrude on their privacy.
• Communicating why you’re tracking time. Aside from complying with the law, highlight that the practice is there for fairness, transparency, and legal protection.
• Addressing the issue of micromanagement head-on. Explain that time tracking is there to improve working conditions and comply with the law, not monitor every second of someone’s day.
• Selling the benefits of timekeeping to your team. Beyond employee productivity gains, explain that individual employees require proper rest periods, and their rights at work must be protected by law.

Establish internal audits and reporting procedures

Don’t wait for an audit announcement to get your records in order. Conducting regular internal audits keeps you compliant and prepared. Here’s how:

• Review time tracking on a monthly basis, looking for missed entries, unapproved overtime hours, or patterns suggesting that some employees are not getting the required rest.
• Set up automated reports to easily spot errors. Tools such as Toggl Track come with built-in reports for total hours, break compliance, and overtime trends. Review them regularly and watch out for risky patterns.
• Prepare for an audit in advance. Create a folder or dashboard that contains all the necessary documents, including a summary of logged hours per employee, system access logs (which verify that each employee has reviewed their records), notes on exceptions or corrections, and any other relevant information.

How to implement mandatory time tracking in your workplace

Now we’ve covered the basics, let’s get our hands dirty and start implementing mandatory time tracking in your organization.

Evaluate your current time tracking practices

Many businesses don’t actively track their time. Others do, but their practices are outdated. Here’s a simple process to check how you keep track of employees:

• Look at how time is being tracked today. Are employees logging start and end times, breaks, and overtime? Is it manual, automated, or a mix of both?
• Check your setup against national and EU laws. For example, does your system support real-time logging like in Greece? Are records stored for long enough, as required in Spain?
• Identify gaps and risks. Look for areas where time entries are missing or inconsistent, breaks and rest periods aren’t tracked, and employees can’t access their logs.
• Talk to your team. They may have insights on what’s working and what’s not. Ask them how easy it is to track time and if they feel confident using the system.

Choose the right time tracking tool

Your time tracking app of choice should meet the following criteria:

• Compliance with relevant EU laws (and the ability to customize the way you track your time to suit your needs)
• A user-friendly interface to increase adoption
• Accessibility for remote, hybrid, and mobile teams
• Detailed reporting with the level of granularity that meets your requirements
• GDPR compliance and data security
• Compliance-focused features such as break tracking, daily logs of start and end times, overtime tracking and approval workflows, data retention settings, and more

Create an implementation plan

Plan your implementation ahead of time to comply and make it easy for your team to adjust. Your plan will depend on your previous experience with time tracking, but it should roughly look like this:

• Set a clear timeline with milestones. For example, when to select the tool, when to start onboarding, and when to go live. Allow some buffer time for training, feedback, and on-the-go adjustments.
• Involve key stakeholders early. Legal, HR, IT, and department team leads are a great start. They can identify compliance needs and support your technical setup while also communicating the value of time tracking and its relationship to compliance.
• Run a pilot phase before going live. A structured rollout provides space to identify technical issues, gather feedback, and refine processes before implementing them company-wide.
• Prepare documentation and support materials. At this stage, you’re in a strong position to create internal guides or walkthroughs explaining how to use the system and why it’s important.
• Communicate clearly and often. Let your team know what’s changing, why it matters, and how it benefits them. Address concerns about privacy, micromanagement, or extra admin work upfront.

Train your employees

With your tools and systems in place, your employees need to learn how and when to track their hours of work. Here’s a great starting point for team training.

• Keep it simple and hands-on. Offer live demos or recorded walkthroughs showing how to log hours, track breaks, and access team time data. Use real-world examples from their day-to-day work so the training feels relevant and useful.
• Be transparent about the why. Clearly explain that time tracking is not about micromanagement. It’s about complying with legal standards, protecting employees from overwork, and improving visibility into workloads and project needs.
• Frame it as a win for them, not you. Help your team see the benefits, such as accurate overtime pay (e.g., for night work), proof of workload in case of audits, improved planning, and support for flexible work arrangements.
• Address concerns early on. Let employees voice any worries about being monitored. Reassure them that the goal is compliance and fairness, not tracking productivity minute by minute with surveillance.
• Provide ongoing support. Offer a helpdesk contact or internal resource where employees can go for assistance. Check in after the rollout to answer questions and make adjustments if needed.

Monitor and optimize the system

The work doesn’t stop once you’ve set everything up. To keep everyone tracking their time diligently, monitor progress and continually optimize your practices. To do so:

• Schedule regular system reviews. Check for missing entries, inconsistent logs, or unused features.
• Use feedback to improve adoption. Ask employees what’s working and what’s frustrating. A quick survey or informal check-in can uncover confusing interfaces, slow mobile apps, or uncertainty about break tracking.
• Make improvements based on data. If you see that certain teams consistently miss break logs or over-report hours, it may signal a need for extra training or a process tweak. Staying responsive shows your team that time tracking is a shared effort, not a top-down mandate.

Integrate time tracking with existing workflows

You shouldn’t track time in isolation from other processes in your business. Integrate your time tracking tool with the rest of your tech stack to increase data accuracy, streamline workflows, make it easy to pay people based on timesheets, and more.

• Connect with HR and payroll tools. Choose a time tracking platform that syncs with your HRIS or payroll software. This reduces errors and makes it easier to manage things like overtime pay, leave balances, and absences automatically.
• Automate wherever possible, using reminders to clock in/out, break notifications, and direct report generation can save time for both employees and managers. This keeps the system running smoothly without adding administrative overhead.
• Embed tracking into daily routines and encourage teams to log time at natural points during the day, like starting a shift or wrapping up a project. The less disruptive it feels, the more consistent your data will be.

Foster a productive and compliant workplace culture

If you don’t frame it the right way, mandatory time tracking feels like a chore. It’s up to you as the employer to introduce time tracking as something that helps everyone win instead of allowing you to micromanage.

• Emphasize fairness and transparency. Time tracking ensures everyone is treated equally, whether it’s receiving overtime pay, taking proper breaks, or avoiding excessive workloads.
• Lead by example. When managers log their time and follow the same rules, it sends a strong message that compliance isn’t just for junior staff. It’s part of how the whole company operates.
• Align tracking with your values. If your company promotes work-life balance or flexible scheduling, show how time tracking protects those commitments.

Other mandatory time tracking laws

EU member states are just some of the many countries worldwide that have laws on time tracking. If you’re in the EU but operating globally, it’s important to stay on top of time tracking legislation in other countries, too, for example:

• In the United States, under the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA), employers must track actual hours worked for non-exempt employees to determine overtime eligibility. The law doesn’t mandate a specific tracking method, but records must be accurate and retained for at least two years. Breaks and rest periods are governed by state law, not federal law.
• In Canada, federal and provincial laws require employers to track hours worked and keep records of overtime, breaks, and rest periods. For example, Ontario’s Employment Standards Act mandates keeping these records for at least three years. Penalties apply for failing to maintain accurate logs.
• In Australia, employers must record hours worked, start and end times, and break durations, especially for award-covered or non-salaried workers. Records must be kept for seven years and made available to the Fair Work Ombudsman upon request.
• In Japan, the Labor Standards Act requires tracking all working hours, especially to monitor for overwork. Employers may face serious consequences if employees exceed legal working hour limits or if logs are falsified.

Track working hours (and so much more) with Toggl Track

If you’re in the European Union and want to comply with the time tracking laws in your country, adopting a reliable time tracking platform such as Toggl Track is the kickstart you need.

Toggl Track does the heavy lifting and creates detailed time logs to stay compliant. The interface is simple and easy to use, so you won’t struggle to gain buy-in from your team.

Your data is safe with Toggl Track since we’re GDPR-friendly and ISO 27001-certified, and powerful reporting features make audits a breeze. As the cherry on top, Toggl Track also integrates with your favorite project management, invoicing, sales, productivity, and other tools.

Our time tracking system scales with your needs, giving you the features you need for your specific country and use case.

But most importantly, Toggl Track isn’t just about compliance. It’s a tool to make your team more productive and transparent about how and when they work.

Talk to our sales team today to learn how Toggl Track can support your team.