Case C-589/22, Collective Redundancies:

J.L.O.G. and J.J.O.P. – v – Resorts Mallorca Hotels International S.L., reference lodged by the Tribunal Superior de Justicia de las Islas Baleares (Spain) on 7 September 2022

Should Article 2 of Council Directive 98/59/EC of 20 July 1998 on the approximation of the laws of the Member States relating to collective redundancies, read in the light of the case-law the Court of Justice of the European Union set out in the judgment of 10 September 2009 (C-44/08, EU:C:2009:533), be interpreted as meaning that the consultation and notification requirements, which underpin the effectiveness of the Directive, arise as soon as an undertaking, as part of a restructuring process, projects a number of terminations of employment contracts which may exceed the collective redundancy threshold, irrespective of the fact that, ultimately, the number of assimilable dismissals or terminations does not reach that threshold on account of measures taken by the employer, without prior consultation with the workers’ representatives, to reduce that number?
Does the provision in the final subparagraph of Article 1(1) of Council Directive 98/59/EC of 20 July 1998 on the approximation of the laws of the Member States relating to collective redundancies, which states that ‘for the purpose of calculating the number of redundancies provided for in the first subparagraph of point (a), terminations of an employment contract which occur on the employer’s initiative for one or more reasons not related to the individual workers concerned shall be assimilated to redundancies, provided that there are at least five redundancies’, in the context of a crisis in which a reduction in the workforce, including through dismissals, is expected, cover worker redundancies proposed by an undertaking, which although not sought by the workers, were accepted by them on receipt of a firm offer of immediate employment at another undertaking, when it was the employer who arranged for its employees to have the option of being interviewed by that other undertaking with a view to their possible recruitment?