EU Court of Justice rules employer to reimburse the cost of glasses for vision-impaired employee
A lawsuit filed by a Romanian employee at the Cluj Immigration Office drove the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) to obligate his employer to pay for the cost of his eyeglasses.
A lawsuit filed by a Romanian employee at the Cluj Immigration Office drove the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) to obligate his employer to pay for the cost of his eyeglasses.
The Luxembourg Court, under case C-392/21, says that the dispute began when the employee was refused by the General Inspectorate after asking them to reimburse the cost of his glasses because he was working on the computer for many hours – an amount of RON 2,629 (approx. EUR 530), which isn’t covered by the Romanian national health insurance system.
“TJ states that working at the monitor and other risk factors, such as "discontinuous visible" light, the absence of natural light, and neuropsychological overload, caused a severe deterioration of his vision. Therefore, at the recommendation of a specialist doctor, he should have changed his spectacles to correct the decrease in his visual acuity,” the judgment of the court document reads.
The plaintiff brought the issue to the local court in Cluj, but it was dismissed for not meeting the terms for the requested reimbursement. According to Article 14 of Government Decision no. 1028/2006, workers can benefit from an ophthalmological examination, and only “if normal corrective devices cannot be used, workers must be provided with special corrective devices appropriate to the activity concerned.”
“In this regard, it tends to consider that, to determine whether that provision is applicable, only the fact of using a special correctional device at the workplace is relevant, whether such a device is also used outside the workplace is irrelevant,” the court document further mentions.
Following an appeal to the Cluj Court of Appeal, the European court ruled out the limitation of exclusivity in the professional setting from the definition of “special corrective devices” and defined it as “eyeglasses specifically aimed at correcting and preventing visual difficulties related to an activity involving monitor equipment.”
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