The Mass Redundancy Directive of the EU and its implementation in Section 17 of the KSchG regulate the obligations of employers in the event of collective redundancies. They must take two measures in advance.
Firstly, they must consult the works council.
Secondly, the employer must notify the competent employment agency of the planned collective redundancy. The notification must contain all relevant information about the intended collective redundancy and the consultations with the works council, in particular the reasons for the redundancy, the number of employees to be made redundant, the number of employees normally employed and the period during which the redundancies are to be made.
Until now, the BAG has ruled that dismissals in violation of the above obligations are invalid. The 6th Senate of the BAG intended to deviate from this harsh legal consequence. It submitted the following questions to the ECJ, among others:
- Are dismissals not invalid if the employment agency does not object to an incorrect mass dismissal notification and thus considers itself to be sufficiently informed?
- If not, can an incorrect or completely missing mass redundancy notification be corrected, supplemented or made up for after the notice of termination has been received?
- Is it sufficient as a sanction that redundancies do not take effect until the mass redundancy has been properly notified?
The ECJ answered these questions in the negative in its decision of 30 October 2025 in Case C-402/24 (Sewel).
The purpose of the mass redundancy notification is to enable the employment agency to seek solutions to the problems arising from a mass redundancy notification. If the employment agency does not have all the relevant information, the purpose of the mass redundancy notification will not be achieved. This is because the employment agency will have to spend time researching the missing information itself. This prevents the agency from placing the affected employees in new jobs.
The ECJ did not answer the second question because there was no connection to the specific case.
On the third question, the ECJ stated that it was up to the Member States to design the procedures. However, merely delaying the termination effect of a dismissal that was pronounced without proper notification of collective redundancies did not satisfy the purpose of the Directive.
Conclusion
So everything remains the same. Errors in the mass redundancy notification regularly lead to the redundancies being invalid.
Summary of the key facts
- An incomplete notification of collective redundancies renders the dismissals invalid
- It is irrelevant whether the employment agency objects to the inaccuracy
- The mere fact that the dismissal takes effect at a later date is not a sufficient sanction for violations of the requirements for notification of collective redundancies
