July 2025
The Supreme Court Judgment No. 736/2025 Rejects Judicial Award of Additional Compensation for Unfair Dismissal: Article 24 of the European Social Charter Is Not Directly Applicable.
The Labour Chamber of the Spanish Supreme Court, sitting en banc and by a wide majority (ten votes to three), delivered Judgment No. 736/2025 on 16 July, ruling on the doctrine unification appeal No. 3993/2024. The case concerned whether an employee who has been unfairly dismissed may claim compensation exceeding the statutory amount when such compensation is insufficient to fully redress the actual damage suffered. The issue was examined in light of Article 10 of ILO Convention No. 158 and Article 24.b of the Revised European Social Charter (RESC), both ratified by Spain, which recognise the right of a worker dismissed without valid reason to receive “adequate compensation or other appropriate relief.”
In the present case, the employee, who had been with the defendant company for just seven months, was summarily dismissed in September 2022. The Social Court No. 3 of Barcelona, in a judgment dated 26 September 2023, declared the dismissal unfair and awarded, in addition to the statutory compensation (amounting to €1,506.78), a further €347.22 plus 10% interest for late payment from 23/09/2022 until the date of the judgment, as well as additional compensation of €5,410.36 for loss of earnings, calculated based on the difference between the salary and the unemployment benefit received.
This additional compensation was overturned by the High Court of Justice of Catalonia in its judgment of 31 May 2024, which upheld the company’s appeal, finding that domestic legislation does not allow for compensation exceeding the limits established in Article 56.1 of the Workers’ Statute (Estatuto de los Trabajadores, ET).
The employee subsequently lodged a cassation appeal for the unification of legal doctrine, alleging contradiction with a judgment delivered by the High Court of Justice of the Basque Country on 23 April 2024 (appeal No. 502/2024), which had recognised additional compensation in a case of dismissal without valid cause, holding that the statutory amount was insufficient.
The appeal was contested by the respondent party, and the Public Prosecutor issued a report recommending dismissal of the appeal.
Once the Reporting Justice had reviewed the case file, the proceedings were declared ready for judgment. In view of the legal nature and significance of the matter at hand, it was decided that the deliberation, voting, and ruling would take place in full chamber session, which was scheduled for 16 July 2025.
As a preliminary note, the Supreme Court found, for the reasons briefly outlined below, that a contradiction did indeed exist, since the factual scenarios in the contested decisions shared sufficient similarities to establish substantial identity, thereby enabling the Court to rule on the merits of the issue.
The appeal was dismissed, and legal doctrine was unified in affirming the legality of the statutory compensation provided for in Article 56.1 of the Workers’ Statute.
In order to facilitate understanding of the judgment, the following sections reproduce—based on the text of the judgment and the dissenting opinions—the main reasoning of relevance, structured as follows: 1) The Cassation Debate; 2) Doctrine on Conventionality Control and Judicial Limits; 3) Rejection of the Direct Effect of Article 24 RESC and Article 10 of ILO Convention No. 158; 4) Article 10 of ILO Convention No. 158: Identical Reasoning Structure; 5) Legal Value of Decisions by the European Committee of Social Rights (ECSR); 6) The Ruling; 7) The Essence of the Dissenting Opinions: Divergent Views; and 7) A General Conclusion.
