Skip to content
Transpira

European Union

A profile set to the European Union evaluates the driver under two regimes at once: driving and rest time (Regulation 561/2006) and working time (Directive 2002/15/EC). Both sets of clocks run side by side, and either can raise an infringement. Weeks are the regulation's fixed weeks — Monday 00:00 to Sunday 24:00.

Limits and clocks

  • Daily driving — 9 hours, extendable to 10 hours at most twice a week. The clock tracks how many extensions are left by counting completed shifts in the current week where driving passed 9 hours.
  • Break — 45 minutes after 4.5 hours of driving. It may be split into 15 minutes followed by 30. Only rest counts toward the break — on-duty work that isn't driving does not interrupt driving.
  • Weekly driving — 56 hours, fortnightly driving — 90 hours (the current fixed week together with the previous one).

Rests and resets

  • Daily rest — 11 hours within each 24-hour period. It may be reduced to 9 hours at most three times between weekly rests; the clock counts the reductions used and requires the full 11 hours once they run out.
  • Weekly rest — 45 hours, due 144 hours (six 24-hour periods) after the end of the previous one. It may be reduced to 24 hours.
  • Compensating a reduction — the difference between 45 hours and the weekly rest actually taken stays as a debt to be repaid en bloc, attached to another rest of at least 9 hours, before the end of the third following week. An outstanding debt gets its own clock counting down to that deadline.

The platform deliberately doesn't model the split daily rest (3 + 9 hours) or the Mobility Package easing for two consecutive reduced weekly rests on international journeys — any rest of at least 9 hours is treated as a (possibly reduced) daily rest.

Working time (WTD)

Directive 2002/15/EC caps working time, not driving alone. The platform counts both driving and other on-duty time as work; periods of availability are not separated out, which is the more conservative reading for the driver.

  • 60 hours is the absolute ceiling on work in a single fixed week.
  • 48 hours is the weekly average across a 17-week reference period.
  • Working break — 30 minutes after 6 hours of work and 45 minutes after 9; the break may be assembled from segments of at least 15 minutes.
  • Night work — if the driver worked inside the night window (00:00–04:00) on a given day, working time that day is capped at 10 hours.

Specifics

Activity records are retained for at least a year. For an inspection you generate a driver activity export for the chosen date range. Tachograph obligations — driver-card and vehicle-unit downloads — are covered in Tachograph, and the Mobility Package obligations (driver and vehicle returns to base, cabotage, posting declarations) in IFTA and mobility.