What is the Holiday Act?

The vacation earned in the vacation year can be taken in the vacation year. It starts at the same time as the vacation year on September 1st but runs until December 31st of the following year.

The law applies to employees who report to an employer.

Self-employed persons or persons who have an influence on the company they work for, for example, are not covered by vacation law. In addition, the law generally only applies to employees in Denmark.

What does the Holiday Act say?

First and foremost, the law stipulates that all employees in Denmark are entitled to take five weeks of vacation per year – equivalent to 25 vacation days.

An employee earns their paid vacation days with 2.08 days per month. This means they can take two days off after one month of employment, which the employer must honor according to vacation law.

It doesn’t matter if the employee works full-time or part-time.

Concurrent vacation - new Holiday Act in 2020

In September 2020, a new Holiday Act came into force. It makes it possible for employees to take a vacation as they earn it in the future.

Before the law was changed, it stated that you had to earn paid vacation days in the calendar year (January 1st to December 31st) before you could take a paid vacation from May 1st the following year. If you had been out of the labor market for a long time or were a new graduate, it would take 16 months before you could take paid vacation.

That is what the new vacation law has changed to comply with an EU directive that ensures that employees who enter or leave the labor market for the first time do not have to wait years to take paid vacation.

The new vacation law thus abolishes the principle that you must earn the right to take a paid vacation in an accrual year before you can take leave in the following vacation year.

Concurrent vacation principle

Instead, the so-called concurrent vacation principle applies, which means that an employee can use the vacation as soon as they have earned it – which is why it is called concurrent vacation.

In principle, employees can therefore take 2.08 days of vacation per month.

The vacation must be agreed upon with the employer, where three of the five allowed weeks must be taken as the primary vacation during the period from May 1st to September 30th. The new vacation law allows for taking four weeks of leave in the vacation year (i.e., before August 31st).