Ryanair’s Irish fiction refuted by European Court of Justice
Irish plane, Irish employee? Court of Justice says ‘No’

Today the EU Court of Justice has published its ‘Ryanair’ judgement on the Home Base issue. The result is very positive and goes beyond our expectations:

• The Court sets a presumption that the Home Base is the habitual place of work for air crews, and thereby the determinant for which national Court has jurisdiction.
• At the same time it allows to challenge the presumption if the base is a bogus one.
• It states that ‘jurisdiction clauses’ in contracts that limit the employee right to bring proceedings to a court that has jurisdiction under EU law are not enforceable. (In other words, no ‘jurisdiction clause’ in a contract can limit the employee’s rights on applicable law granted by the EU rules.)

The judgement is definitely stopping Ryanair’s claim that the nationality of the aircraft should determine the jurisdiction and the applicable law.

Their mantra “Irish plane, Irish worker” is demolished:
Ryanair lost their argument.

It is also important to note that the ‘base’ is, thanks to this judgement, de facto considered as an establishment. It is something that also has quite an importance.

In addition, the judgement will have impact on other airlines and brokers with contractual set-ups that use jurisdiction clauses to limit the employees’ rights: from now on, they have clearly been ruled as not enforceable.

For BeCA/ECA, it is a great satisfaction to see that the arguments made in ECA’s submissions to the EU Court of Justice and to the Member States have been followed by the court.

We really hope that this judgement will help us to better defend your rights in Belgium, and to make social dumping in Europe more difficult.

For more information, you can have a look at ECA’s Press Release and/or the full EU Court Judgement.