European workers experience significant disparities in paid time off, with Estonia leading at 39 non-working days (combining public holidays and annual leave) and the Netherlands trailing at just 29 days. Luxembourg performs strongly with 37 days, tying with Finland for fourth place behind Malta and Austria (38 days).
At the bottom of the ranking are employees in the Netherlands (29 combined days), who are even worse off than the Belgians and the Irish (30 days).
As the French government is proposing to scrap two public holidays to contribute to budget efforts, our colleagues from RTL Infos wanted to find out in which countries employees are most spoilt in this regard.
Figures published by EURES, the European Job Mobility Portal, show that Cyprus offers the most generous public holiday allowance in the EU at 15 days annually, followed by Croatia, Spain, Slovakia, Bulgaria, Romania, and Malta (14 days).
Luxembourg’s 11 public holidays place it slightly below the EU average of 12, alongside France, Estonia, Sweden, Hungary, Italy, and Greece. The Netherlands and Denmark provide the fewest at nine days. Luxembourg recently joined the “11-day club” in 2019 when lawmakers added Europe Day (9 May) as a national holiday. In France, the Alsace and Moselle departments benefit from two extra public holidays, Good Friday, and Saint Stephen’s Day (26 December), due to local law.
The Netherlands and Denmark provide the fewest public holidays at nine days. Germany is a special case, as the country also has 9 statutory public holidays at the federal level, but each state is free to grant additional days. As a result, Germans have between 10 and 14 public holidays per year, depending on the region.
While EU law mandates a minimum of four weeks (20 days) of paid annual leave, actual entitlements vary significantly across member states. 16 countries adhere strictly to this baseline requirement.
Estonia leads with 28 days of statutory leave, followed closely by Luxembourg at 26 days. France, Austria, Denmark, and Sweden provide 25 working days (equivalent to five weeks), while Germany, Finland, and Malta offer 24 days.
Spain presents a unique case: though workers receive 30 calendar days of paid leave, this includes weekends – effectively translating to 22 working days.
