Annual leave entitlement: how many days and how they accrue

“How many days do I get?” sounds like a one-number question. In practice the number is built in layers - law, agreements, company policy - and then two more rules decide how it behaves: what happens in a partial year, and whether the days arrive all at once or month by month.

Layer one: the legal minimum

Every country sets a floor below which no contract may go. In the EU the Working Time Directive guarantees at least four weeks of paid annual leave - 20 working days on a five-day week. The Netherlands writes it as a formula: four times the weekly working hours, which lands on the same 20 days for full-time. Ukraine grants at least 24 calendar days per working year.

Note the units: some countries count working days, others calendar days. Comparing a “24” to a “20” without checking the unit is the first classic mistake in this topic.

Layers two and three: agreements and policy

On top of the floor, collective or sector agreements often add days - and then the employer adds its own, as a benefit. That is how a Dutch contract commonly ends up at 25 days, and why two people in the same country can have different, perfectly legal entitlements. The layers only ever add: policy may give more than the law, never less.

Statutory minimums, units and special categories (minors, hazardous work, long service) differ by country and change over time. Whatever numbers you put in your policy, check them against the current law of each country where your people are employed.

A partial year: the pro-rata rule

People rarely join on 1 January. Someone who starts on 1 September with a 24-day yearly norm earns the remaining third of the year - 24 × 4/12 = 8 days. The same arithmetic runs in reverse when someone leaves mid-year. Two details belong in the written rule, because they cause most of the arguments: how you round (half-days are usually rounded in the employee’s favour) and from which date the count starts - the contract date, not the first working Monday.

Up-front or month by month

The yearly number is set; the second question is when the days become available. There are two honest models:

Up-front: the whole entitlement is available from day one of the year. Simple and generous - people can plan a long trip in February. The risk sits at the exit: someone who uses all 24 days and resigns in March has taken more than they earned, and clawing that back is legally awkward in many countries.
Monthly accrual: the balance grows by one-twelfth each month. Fair to both sides at any exit date - but a newcomer cannot take a real holiday for half a year, so most policies allow going slightly negative. Which is, again, one more rule to write down.

Why this must live as one written rule

Entitlement looks like a number but behaves like a small program: base + top-ups, pro-rated by dates, released by a schedule, rounded by a convention. Every input lives on a different piece of paper unless you put them together. Write the rule once - days, unit, accrual model, rounding, start date - and apply it to everyone identically. And what happens to the days nobody used by December is a separate rule with its own traps: we covered it in the carry-over article.