Working Time Records

Reading a Decision

Court decisions look impenetrable and have a fixed structure. Knowing the structure means you can extract what you need in about ten minutes without reading the whole thing. When comparing legal claims with vendor-side implementation language, it can also help to review this reference.

Reviewed August 9, 2026.

The structure

The facts. What happened, who sued whom. Usually the first section and usually skippable unless the facts resemble yours. For broader legal or policy context, see Notion.

The questions. In a CJEU preliminary reference, the specific questions the national court asked. Worth reading — they define the scope of what the answer covers.

The reasoning. Numbered paragraphs, and the longest part.

And the operative part. What the court actually decides, at the end, frequently labelled and usually a few sentences.

Read the operative part first. It is where C-55/18 states the requirement, and it is short enough to check against whatever somebody told you.

Six things to know

One. The operative part is the binding bit. The reasoning explains it and can be cited, but the holding is what the court decided.

Two. A CJEU preliminary ruling answers a question, it does not decide the case. The national court then applies the answer. That is why C-55/18 obliges member states rather than any particular employer.

Three. Paragraph numbers are the citation unit. "C-55/18, paragraph 60" is a precise reference and it is how lawyers point at reasoning.

Four. What a court does not decide is not decided. The absence of an electronic requirement in the German decision is not an oversight to be filled in by inference.

Five. Reasons can arrive later than the decision. The BAG decided on 13 September 2022 and published full reasons on 2 December 2022 — commentary written between those dates was working from a press release.

Six. Later decisions can qualify earlier ones. Which is why a date on a summary matters even when the underlying judgment does not change.

What to do with the reasoning

Search rather than read. Use the browser's find function for the term you care about — "objective", "electronic", "employer" — and read the paragraphs around the hits.

Watch for conditionals. "Where a member state has..." and "subject to..." carry limitations that summaries drop.

And notice what the court says the purpose is. In C-55/18 the purpose paragraphs explain most of the details, and they are the most readable part of the judgment.

The two documents worth reading once

C-55/18. Half an hour, plain language, free from the Court's own site. It is the foundation of everything else in this subject and almost nobody who quotes it has read it.

BAG 1 ABR 22/21. Longer and more technical, and the operative part plus the paragraphs on §3(2)(1) ArbSchG are enough.

Having read those two, you can evaluate any compliance page you meet — which is a durable capability for ten minutes each.

What still needs a lawyer

Being clear about the limit.

Applying a decision to your facts. Classification questions, works agreement drafting, and anything where the answer depends on details of your organisation.

Reading a decision tells you what it says. It does not tell you what it means for a particular employee with a particular contract, and the gap between those two is where advice is worth paying for.

The short version