Extended unpaid parental leave as the period of employment (not) favourable to parent employee : conclusions de lege lata and de lege ferenda

Employees have different caring responsibilities at different stages of their life, some take care of the children, others of sick members of their family. For some years now, there have been attempts to find solutions how to resolve the key problem, which is the uneven participation of men and women in childcare, as well as in the care over other dependants. However, currently, an employee taking advantage of extended unpaid parental leave gets neither remuneration from the employment relationship nor maternity allowance, which results in the fact that most fathers still do not make use of their right to extended unpaid parental leave. Often, neither of the parents benefits from this entitlement, but they return to work right after the paid parental leave. The purpose of extended unpaid parental leave, just like in the case of other parent-related leaves of absence, is to take personal care of the child. Currently, there are a few solutions whose aim is to make it easier to the parents to combine their private and professional life. The possibility to undertake additional activities during the extended unpaid parental leave is one of them. According to the Labour Code regulations, an employee can undertake gainful employment or other activity at his/her existing or a new employer or can undertake some studying or training when he/she takes advantage of the extended unpaid parental leave on condition that it does not exclude the possibility to take personal care of the child (Art. 1862 § 1 of the Labour Code). Implementing the directive (UE) 2019/1158 into the national legal order might be an excellent opportunity to modify the already existing institution of the extended unpaid parental leave. The essential novum which the directive will introduce, and which is to encourage the fathers to take care of the children, is to entitle the working parents to two months of parental leave that is not transferrable to the other parent of the child. Certainly, financial aspects will be of significance to the parents. Therefore, it is essential that the state budget covers the two months of obligatory parental leave benefits which are solely dedicated to the fathers of the children.