European Court rules on "display screen" definition

The European Display Screen Equipment Directive covers workstations with screens on which film clips and video recordings are displayed as well as conventional computer workstations, according to a recent judgement of the European Court of Justice (ECJ).

In the case of Dietrich v Westdeutscher Runddfunk the ECJ ruled that, for the purposes of the directive, the term "graphic display screen" had to be interpreted to include screens that display film recordings in analogue or digital form. Therefore, the employer of a film cutter had to "plan her activities in such a way that her daily work at the monitors was periodically interrupted by breaks or changes of activity," according to Industrial Relations Law Bulletin No 661.

The court rejected the arguments that the workstations were not covered as they were "control cabs for .machinery" and that "display screen equipment" only covered screens where alphanumeric or graphic representations of characters rather than moving images were displayed.