Licence for own affairs and its impact for holiday purposes

The question raised concerns the impact of the Home Affairs Licence for the purposes of calculating holidays.

To this end, it is necessary to analyze the provisions of the articulated text of the Law of Civil Servants of the State, approved by Decree 315/1964, of February 7 (hereinafter, LFCE) and the consolidated text of the Law of the Basic Statute of the Public Employee, approved by Royal Legislative Decree 5/2015, of October 30, (hereinafter, TRLEBEP)

The license for own affairs is regulated in article 73 of the articulated text of the Law of Civil Servants of the State, approved by Decree 315/1964, of February 7 (hereinafter, LAFCE) and establishes the following: “Licenses may be granted on their own behalf. Such licences shall be granted without payment, and their cumulative duration may not exceed three months in two years.”

This provision is still in force in accordance with the provisions of the derogatory provision and the final provision fourth.2 of the consolidated text of the Law on the Basic Status of Public Employees, approved by Royal Legislative Decree 5/2015, of 30 October, (hereinafter, TRLEBEP) which provides that:

“Until the Civil Service laws are enacted and the development regulations are in force in each Public Administration, the current regulations on the management, planning and management of human resources shall remain in force as long as they do not conflict with the provisions of this Statute.”

For its part, article 50 of the TRLEBEP regulates the holidays of public officials in the following terms: “Public officials shall have the right to enjoy, during each calendar year, a paid vacation of twenty-two working days, or the corresponding days proportionally if the service time during the year was shorter. For the purposes of this article, they shall not be considered as working days on Saturdays, without prejudice to the adaptations established for the special schedules.”

Therefore, while the staff member remains in active service during leave on his or her own behalf, he or she does not perform any actual benefits, and the leave entitlements of each staff member will be reduced proportionately, in accordance with article 50 of the TRLEBEP and other applicable regulations.

All of the foregoing is without prejudice to recalling that, according to the regime of competences of this management center, the answers to queries issued by this general directorate are merely informative and, consequently, are not of a binding criterion, nor do they give rise to rights or expectations of law, nor imply any link with the type of procedures to which they refer. Furthermore, in the absence of a mandatory or binding nature, the bodies receiving such replies may, where appropriate, finally take a decision that does not correspond to the opinion contained therein.

The responses to queries contained in this bulletin address the issues raised in the light of the regulations in force at the time of their issuance, so that such responses may be affected by subsequent legislative changes or judicial decisions.