It's almost Christmas and you are probably all wondering the number remaining days-off you have? It is worth noticing that each country has different rules and different duration of legal and paid holidays in Europe.

The average number of days of paid leave is 11 with a minimum of 8 days for the Netherlands, Germany, United Kingdom and Romania and a maximum of 15 days for Slovakia, followed by Spain and Malta with 14 days at the rear of the pack.

Regarding legal holidays, or vacation day, the winners are Estonia & the United Kingdom with 28 days. Half of the 28 European countries have 20 days of official annual holidays which is two days above average.

The average numbers of holidays in the European Union is 33,75 days with 14 countries above 34 days.

We do not really identify regional particularities except for Italy, Croatia, Slovenia and Slovakia.

Different laws

France and Luxembourg have almost the same amount of legal holidays per year (5 weeks), but France has 11 days off and Luxembourg 10. Nevertheless, in Luxembourg we work 40 hours per week and in France 35 hours. Where would you prefer to work?

In parallel, in Luxembourg, when a paid holiday falls on a weekend, employees have the right to catch it up within 3 months. For instance, if on December, the 25th falls on a Sunday, you will have one day to catch up until March, the 25th! What a perfect rule, isn't it? Where would you prefer to work now?

In Switzerland, you cannot catch up a public holiday, but if this public day-off is during your holidays, it is not counted has a holiday day, so you're winning one more day!

In Spain, when public holiday falls on a Sunday, it is postponed to the next Monday, so you get a long weekend!

If holidays are decisive for you to choose where you would like to work in Europe, double check before choosing one!