When I was signaling my support for the Community Day campaign Kevin (who’s blog is one of my regular reads) asked how we compare to other European countries on annual leave.

Wikipedia may not always be the most reliable of sources, but here’s a few from their page on this:

• Austria – 5 weeks
• Belgium – 20 days, premium pay
• Denmark – 6 weeks, of which 5 days can be “sold” back to the employer – omsorgsdage (carer’s leave).
• France – 5 weeks (+ 2 weeks of RTT (Reduction du Temps de Travail, in English : Reduction of Working Time) according to the contract)
• Germany – 4 weeks, i.e. 24 “workable” days based on a six day week (Mon – Sat). Normal work-week is Mo-Fr; plus 9 to 13 bank holidays; plus sick, pregnancy, mothership and personal leave
• Greece – 20 working days or more depending of the years in the company
• Hungary -20 working days
• Ireland – 20 days, plus 9 public holidays
• Italy – 20-32 working days (exact amount depends on contract details) plus 12 public holidays
• Netherlands – 4 weeks
• Poland – 20 business days, 26 business days after 10 years of employment
• Portugal – 22 working days, up to 25 without work absences in previous year.
• Sweden – 25-32 working days, depending on age
• UK – 4 working weeks, with no additional entitlement for bank holidays. Increases to 4.8 weeks from 1st October 2007, and to 5.6 weeks from 1st April 2009

Not the full 35 members, I know, but I hope it’s a reasonable sample.

So not only do we have fewer public holidays, but they can be taken as part of our annual leave entitlements should our employers want to, and we’re hardly at the most generous nation in terms of annual leave anyway.