EULEX Kosovo SAGA:
The Search For The Responsible Party
What are theses cases about?
It concerns workers employed as part of the EULEX Kosovo Mission, an EU mission presented as temporary, but which has been going on for years (19! exclaimed the Judge-Rapporteur) and still employs the same staff. These workers have had a series of fixed-term contracts (CDD), often signed after the start date, with very precarious careers and incomes. The heart of the debate is not the mission itself, but the legality of the contractual framework imposed on workers: who really decides, which labour law applies, who is ultimately the responsible ‘employer’?
The Setting
Two days of marathon hearings at the TUE. A court composed of nine judges (a rather exceptional circumstance that deserves to be highlighted), one lawyer representing the 34 workers bringing the case, arguing tirelessly against 17 lawyers, advisers and attorneys from the institutions (EEAS, Council, European Commission) and the Mission, who took turns at opportune moments.
The hearing on 29–30 January 2026 set the terms of the debate where they belonged: at the level of the system, not the individuals. Our 34 colleagues did not “misunderstand” or “mismanage” their contracts; they were placed in a legally incomplete, socially deficient and normatively fragmented environment, attributable to governance and policy choices made at EU level.
The EULEX Kosovo Mission has never been a temporary project. It is a long-term undertaking and has been recruiting high-level professionals for years to uphold the European promise of the rule of law on the field. The heart of the dispute is not the temporary nature of the mission, but the legality of the contractual framework that has been imposed on a specific category of its international staff: successive fixed-term contracts, no social security base, and fragmented references to national rights that neither the Mission nor the EU have effectively made applicable or enforceable in practice.
Our cause is simple, just and well-founded!
We demand that the EU, through its missions, apply to its own staff the very standards it promotes. No category of EU staff should be left without social security, without a common framework, without guarantees. In these cases, we have provided the judges with the facts, the methodology and the law that demonstrate the structural illegality of the system under attack.
Responsibility: ‘When the Mission executes, responsibility lies with those who design and secure the framework.’
It has been demonstrated that contractual responsibility stems from an operational contract that implements an architecture without a sufficient normative basis to legalise structural derogations (fixed-term contracts, reduced remuneration, termination of employment); if the Mission could do nothing, the EU had to plan and take responsibility. Nothing was unavoidable. Another implementation was possible if the EU had agreed to fully assume its role as a public employer by providing the mechanism with a genuine normative corpus (and compensation) commensurate with the requirements of the Common Foreign and Security Policy.
Dignity at work: “No European employer, and certainly not the EU, can expect people to work long-term without social security.”
For years, our colleagues worked without their employers paying social security contributions, without being registered with a social security scheme, without building up pension rights, and without unemployment cover. Instead, a standard clause declared them ‘solely responsible’ for their social security and tax affiliation in their country of residence, without any affiliation mechanism, support, guarantee of results or adequate information.
On this point, it has been demonstrated that no remuneration policy can replace a social security scheme; transferring the risk to the employee via a standard clause is ineffective and contrary to the fundamental principles of European social law. Practical or technical impossibility never removes the legal obligation and does not authorise the full transfer of risk to the worker. The system put in place was inherent in the architecture decided at EU level. That is where the responsibility lies: a framework for affiliation and effective guarantees was needed – it was not provided.
Here, the position is simple and powerful: social security is not an option. It is an integral part of decent work, and the EU cannot expect those who uphold its values on the front line to do without it. Our colleagues are quite right to expect a social safety net that is no less than that offered to other EU staff. The total absence of social protection is not the result of an individual choice by workers, nor of legitimate budgetary considerations: it is the result of a flawed institutional arrangement that has exposed colleagues to long-term precariousness that is incompatible with European values.
Rule of law: “Equality is not measured by terms and conditions, but by effective rights.”
The reality is simple: one employer, yet varying rights. With the same mission, identical internal rules, comparable job categories and the same operational constraints, the level of rights – and jurisdiction – applicable to the employment relationship varies from one employee to another, not according to the nature of the work, but according to the national law to which the employer claims to attach the relationship. That is the essence of inequality. What has been brilliantly demonstrated in the Court is a structural inequality generated by fragmented reference to national laws, in violation of good administration: same employer, varying rights, unequal access to the courts. The fault is institutional and can be corrected.
In any Member State, a labour court would examine the situation as a whole: conditions for the use of successive fixed-term contracts, justifications, duty to provide prior information, lawfulness of a reduction in remuneration, authorised derogations, accessibility/ predictability/ consistency of the rules. Here, all these answers differ depending on the Member State of reference, without the Mission (or the EU) having verified the practical applicability of the relevant law.
“Political immunity cannot cover a legal vacuum: the Council must answer for its choices”
One point raised by the institutions’ defence calls for a firm response: the EEAS asserts that the absence of a legal framework for EULEX contracts is the result of a “political and strategic choice” by the Council, which is allegedly beyond the Court’s jurisdiction. This position is unacceptable. While certain operational decisions may be subject to political assessment, the total absence of rules can never be protected by immunity. No EU body can decide to leave workers uncovered by the law, without a predictable framework, without social protection and without applicable rules. Immunity from control does not cover up the vacuum: not adopting a framework is not a political choice, it is a failure, and this failure must remain fully justiciable.[1]
Leitmotifs
Throughout the two days of hearings before the exceptional formation of nine judges, our counsel, Nathalie de Montigny returned—again and again—to a set of core truths. These were not rhetorical flourishes, nor peripheral observations. They were the structural constants of our case, the elements that resurfaced each time the discussion touched on responsibility, legality, or the lived reality of the work within EULEX.
These leitmotifs were heard so often because they reveal, with unmistakable clarity, the systemic flaws that no contractual clause, no administrative workaround, and no appeal to “flexibility” can disguise. They form the backbone of our arguments and the mirror in which the Union must finally look.
What follows is the distilled essence of what the Court heard repeatedly from our side: four simple propositions—evident, robust, and impossible to refute—that show why the system applied to EULEX staff cannot be regarded as a legal, lasting employment relationship or one that complies with the very principles of the European Union.
These are the points the judges now carry with them.
These are the realities the Union cannot ignore.
These are the truths that structure our common fight.
The Union is (at least) a public employer
Even if the Mission is not a traditional ‘private employer’, it acts as an organ of the Union. No European public employer can organise a sustainable work relationship without minimum social protection, without regulating the use of fixed-term contracts, without guaranteeing access to the courts with predictable rules. What the EU requires of third countries through EULEX, it must first assume for itself.
Gross salary is not social security
A salary, even if increased, does not create contributory rights, does not contribute to a public pension, does not cover unemployment or illness, and does not give rise to family allowances. The argument of gross ‘compensation’ is an economic fallacy and a legal contradiction.
“Patchwork” does not mean equality
Inequality cannot be eliminated by including “the same provision” in all contracts if that provision results in different – and sometimes incompatible – legal situations for comparable employees depending on the Member State in question. Equality is measured by concrete effects and the level of judicial review available.
The imaginary labour judge
In which Member State would this system, as it stands, have passed the test of a labour court? Massive use of fixed-term contracts, imposed reductions in remuneration, lack of information on essential points, foreclosure induced by internal procedures, no social security affiliation provided by the employer… NOWHERE!
A message of hope
You are not alone, and your position is not fragile. It is legally well-founded, humanly legitimate and politically consistent with what Europe wants to be in the world. Whatever the outcome, you have already contributed to advancing the law: you have forced the EU to face up to a blind spot in its own staff management. This is precisely how the rule of law progresses – through the voices of those who calmly but firmly demand that the rules also apply to those who lay them down.
As we conclude, it is worth acknowledging a final element that hovered, discreetly but unmistakably, over the two days of hearings: the exceptional composition of a nine‑judge formation. Such an enlarged bench is rare, and while we must remain prudent in our interpretations, its mere existence signals that the Court is fully aware of the systemic importance of the issues raised in these cases.
We cannot assume—nor should we claim—that this configuration guarantees an outcome in our favour. But it does suggest that the Court may be prepared to look beyond the confines of earlier, detrimental jurisprudence, and to reconsider, with fresh eyes and full institutional weight, the coherence, legality and fairness of the regime applied to EULEX staff.
It is only a possibility, of course—nothing more than a reasonable supposition. Yet in a litigation that has too often been characterised by restrictive decisions, the willingness of the Court to mobilise such a formation is, in itself, a sign of seriousness, attention and perhaps openness.
And for all of us who have carried this long fight, that alone is already a source of measured confidence.
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This report is prepared by Emmanuel Wietzel, Managing Director at Union Syndicale European Public Service, from the hearings at the Court of Justice of the European Union on 29 – 30 January 2026
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[1] This was a position also supported by the Kingdom of Spain, invoking the passive legitimacy of the Council.
