Filenews 2 November 2022 - byAdamos Adamou
Finally, with three weeks of paid parental leave, the institution of parental leave will begin, based on the revised bills submitted to the Parliament for the adoption of the relevant European directive. Initially, the bills provided that in the first year of adoption of the directive, paid parental leave would be limited to two weeks. The improvement in terms of the transitional period until the full adoption of the directive is recorded, as we mentioned, in the revised bills that were submitted just the day before yesterday to the Parliament and were presented yesterday to the Parliamentary Working Committee. From week to week, the bills will be discussed by article by the Labor Committee, in order for them to be put to a vote in the Plenary of the House before the end of the year and before the closure of the House in view of presidential elections.
Under the EU Directive on work-life balance, parents with children up to eight years old will be entitled to 18 weeks' parental leave, of which eight weeks will be paid, i.e. a parental leave allowance will be paid for them by the CTA. In the first phase, however, the parental leave allowance will be paid to beneficiaries with a maximum period of three weeks per calendar year, for the period from the entry into force of this law until December 31, 2023. In a second phase, and specifically from January 1, 2024 until the end of the same year, paid parental leave - parental leave allowance - will be able to be taken for up to four weeks and after 2025 beneficiaries will be able to receive for each year up to five weeks of paid parental leave. The parental leave allowance until August 2024 will be limited to six weeks and then, from August 2024 onwards, the parental leave allowance will be paid for a period of 8 weeks. As mentioned, however, the maximum parental leave per year is limited to 5 weeks, paid or not.
Improvements to the revised bills of the Ministry of Labour, following the discussion that preceded it in the Working Committee, were also made with regard to children with disabilities. The new texts of the bills specifically provide that paid parental leave for parents with children with severe or moderate disabilities is increased from eight weeks to 12 weeks, while for parents with children with total disability to 14 weeks. The new texts have also reduced the time that the employee will have to inform about taking parental leave to three weeks before the date of its commencement, as well as the time that the employer must respond, to the two weeks before the date on which parental leave would begin according to the employee's request.
The General Manager of the Ministry of Labour Andreas Zachariadis said yesterday that the actuary of the CTA approved the changes that were promoted in the Parliament tolerably, but hinting, when asked about it, that the improvements are the maximum that can be made, apparently invited to comment on the requests for the provision of an allowance and in terms of carers' leave, five working days per year provided for in the bills and the EU directive and for the leave of absence on grounds of superiority.
