E.A.T win for Naomi Ling 

Naomi Ling acted for the successful claimant in a case giving rise to important new Authority that the Serco principles, limiting statutory employment rights to employment "based in the UK", would not apply where the right was based on directly effective European law and where the relevant legislation was capable of being harmoniously interpreted with that law.

This an important for Claimants whose employers have deliberately sought to make it difficult to enforce employment rights by registering their companies where the employment is not based and by adopting the law of another country to govern the contract.

The Claimants was a lorry driver who worked mainly in Austria and Germany but whose contract of employment was with a company registered in England, was governed by English law and which sought to confer exclusive jurisdiction on the English courts.

Elais J held that, as with Employment Rights Act 1996, there was no express provision limiting the geographical scope of the Working Time Regulations, which were the relevant domestic law for giving effect to Article 7 of Council Directive 2003/88/EC on working time. Absent any question of EU rights, there was no reason to think that the Regulations should be interpreted differently from the interpretation of the ERA in Serco. However English law was the proper law of the contract, or where the Rome Convention applied English law employment relationships effect must be given to directly effective rights by construing them in a manner compatible with the directive.

Doubt was cast on authorities in which it had been found that the Serco test applied to claims brought under the Disability Discrimination Act and the Fixed Term Employment Regulation, on the basis had it been argued that the rights relied derived from directly effective European law.