Driving and rest times in passenger transport: does the Fahrpersonalverordnung apply to my minibuses?

In passenger transport, the driving and rest time rules of Regulation (EC) No 561/2006 bite only for vehicles constructed and equipped to carry, and intended to carry, more than nine people including the driver. Section 1(1) no. 2 of the Fahrpersonalverordnung adopts that wording verbatim and thereby also captures vehicles with more than nine seats used on scheduled services with a route length of up to 50 kilometres. Below the limit, neither set of rules applies.

The classic nine-seater, the standard size in many passenger transport fleets, sits just underneath. It takes the tenth seat to tip the assessment.

Construction counts, not how many seats are filled on the day

What matters is what a vehicle is suitable and intended for, not how many passengers happen to travel on a given day. A twelve-seater that takes only two children to a special-needs school on Monday remains a vehicle above the threshold. Conversely, a fully loaded nine-seater does not bring the operation within the drivers hours rules. Removing a row of seats to create two wheelchair spaces may change the relevant seat count. That belongs in the vehicle file and should be evidenced through the Zulassungsbescheinigung Teil I (part I of the German vehicle registration certificate).

The fourth row matters for care providers running their own fleet. Section 18(1) no. 9 FPersV exempts vehicles with ten to 17 seats used exclusively for non-commercial carriage of passengers. Whether trips run by an institution for its own staff or residents count as non-commercial is decided case by case. As soon as the same vehicles also take on paid third-party runs for a neighbouring municipality, the exemption no longer holds. Where there is doubt, the assessment should be agreed with the competent state authority before the fleet is reorganised.

Above the threshold, the familiar commercial transport machinery applies. The Bundesamt für Logistik und Mobilität (the German federal office for logistics and mobility) summarises the core figures of Regulation (EC) No 561/2006 as follows:

• Daily driving time of no more than nine hours, extendable to ten hours twice a week.
• Weekly driving time of no more than 56 hours, and no more than 90 hours across two consecutive weeks.
• After four and a half hours of driving at the latest, a break of at least 45 minutes, which may be split into 15 minutes followed by 30 minutes.
• Daily rest of at least eleven hours; reduction to nine hours is permitted no more than three times between two weekly rest periods.
• Weekly rest of at least 45 hours, reducible under conditions to at least 24 hours with compensation within three weeks.

For scheduled services with a route length of up to 50 kilometres, section 1(3) FPersV provides different break rules. If the average distance between stops exceeds three kilometres, a break of 30 consecutive minutes after four and a half hours of driving is sufficient, replaceable by two partial breaks of 20 minutes each or three of 15 minutes each. Where stops are closer together, scheduled interruptions of work such as turnaround times can be counted, provided they amount to at least one sixth of the planned driving time.

Daily record sheets do not belong here

The much-quoted handwritten daily record sheets, to be carried for 28 calendar days and kept by the operator for a year, sit in section 1(6) FPersV. They expressly apply only to vehicles under subsection 1 no. 1, that is to the carriage of goods between 2.8 and 3.5 tonnes. For passenger transport vehicles the provision is beside the point, because proof there runs through the tachograph. Operators who keep them anyway are documenting diligently into a void.

On top of that, section 21a of the Arbeitszeitgesetz applies to all road transport activities within the meaning of Reg. 561/2006. Working time may not exceed 48 hours per week and may be extended to 60 hours only if an average of 48 hours is maintained over four calendar months or 16 weeks. Under section 21a(7), the employer must record working time and keep the records for at least two years.

One worry can be cleared up here. The tachograph obligation extended on 1 July 2026 to vehicles over 2.5 and up to 3.5 tonnes maximum permissible mass including trailers regularly prompts questions in passenger transport, because many minibuses fall in that weight range. The BALM draws the scope clearly. It covers cross-border carriage of goods and cabotage, not passenger transport and not purely domestic journeys.

Below ten people the tachograph falls away. The duties do not. The Arbeitszeitgesetz applies regardless of vehicle size and draws the real planning boundaries in passenger transport:

• [Section 3 ArbZG](https://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/arbzg/__3.html): working time of no more than eight hours per working day, extendable to ten hours only if eight hours are not exceeded on average over six calendar months or 24 weeks.
• [Section 4 ArbZG](https://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/arbzg/__4.html): at least 30 minutes of rest break for more than six and up to nine hours of working time, 45 minutes for more than nine hours, divisible into blocks of at least 15 minutes each. Nobody may work longer than six hours at a stretch without a break.
• [Section 5 ArbZG](https://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/arbzg/__5.html): an uninterrupted rest period of at least eleven hours after the end of daily working time. Transport operations may shorten it by up to one hour if every reduction is offset within a calendar month or four weeks by extending another rest period to at least twelve hours.
• [Section 16(2) ArbZG](https://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/arbzg/__16.html): working time going beyond eight hours must be recorded, and the records kept for at least two years.

Nine-hour rest periods do not exist here. The reduction familiar from the lorry world, three times between two weekly rest periods, comes from Reg. 561/2006 and applies only above the nine-person limit. For the eight-seater in patient transport it stays at eleven hours, exceptionally ten in a transport operation, offset to twelve.

Then there is the sector-specific documentation. The passenger transport trade is expressly listed as an affected sector in section 2a(1) of the Schwarzarbeitsbekämpfungsgesetz (the German act on combating undeclared work), and section 17(1) of the Mindestlohngesetz attaches to that listing. The start, end and duration of daily working time must be recorded within seven calendar days of the work being performed, and under section 17(2) the documents kept for at least two years. Separately from that, the Bundesarbeitsgericht (the Federal Labour Court) held on 13 September 2022 (1 ABR 22/21) that employers must already set up a system for recording working time under section 3(2) no. 1 of the Arbeitsschutzgesetz (the Occupational Safety and Health Act).

Morning run from 6:15, last school reached at 8:10, return trips from 12:30, then two runs to a sheltered workshop in the afternoon. The split shift is the norm in school transport, and the gap in the middle is happily booked in rosters as rest time. That is where the costliest misjudgements start. Under working time law, three categories come into question for the gap, and they are not interchangeable.

1. 1Rest breakThe break under section 4 ArbZG must be fixed in advance and may only be split into blocks of at least 15 minutes. It covers the midday gap in working time terms, but by length it is not the right category for four hours of waiting.
2. 2Standby timeIf the driver has to stay available to take on a trip at short notice, that is in principle working time under the Arbeitszeitgesetz. The exception in section 21a(3) ArbZG, under which certain periods of availability do not count as working time, applies only to road transport activities within the meaning of Reg. 561/2006 and therefore not to the eight-seater.
3. 3Rest periodRest under section 5 ArbZG is the uninterrupted period of at least eleven hours after the end of daily working time. A gap between two runs on the same working day is therefore by definition not a rest period, however long it is.

Two things follow for roster planning. First, the status of the gap has to be documented. Genuine free time fixed in advance with no expectation of availability is a different thing from waiting at the depot, and an operator who still lets the dispatcher slot in a patient trip at 10:40 has answered the question in practice. Second, the interval between the end of the afternoon run and the start of the next morning run sets the upper bound of the roster. Drop off the last pupil at 17:30 and the earliest possible next deployment is 4:30. How the carriage itself is classified under transport law depends additionally on the type of service; we have covered freigestellter Schülerverkehr under the FrStllgV, the exempted form of school transport, separately.

In practice two pairs of deadlines get mixed up, those of the Mindestlohngesetz and those of the Fahrpersonalverordnung. They have different addressees and different lengths.

Inspection pressure on hour recording has risen lately, and that has to do with pay. Since 1 January 2026 the statutory minimum wage has stood at 13.90 euros per hour, rising to 14.60 euros on 1 January 2027. Whether it is being met can only be judged from the relationship between pay and hours actually worked. The record thereby becomes the evidence for the wage payment itself. We worked through how the two steps feed into full cost per kilometre in the cost-per-kilometre calculation for minibuses.

Five mistakes that keep turning up in inspections

1. Nine people confused with 3.5 tonnes. The weight limits come from the carriage of goods. In passenger transport only the number of seats including the driver counts.
2. Assuming mini-jobbers are exempt. The recording duty under section 17 MiLoG attaches to the sector and to the employment relationship, not to its size. Customs look particularly closely at marginally employed staff, because the number of hours decides whether the earnings threshold holds.
3. Waiting time booked as rest time. Rest is only the continuous period after the end of daily working time. Periods of availability between two runs are not.
4. Working times reconstructed after the fact. Hours back-calculated from route plans are not a record within the meaning of section 17 MiLoG and rarely survive an inspection.
5. Tachographs bought without cause. Vehicles up to nine people carry no fitting obligation. Voluntarily installed devices create no duty, but neither do they replace working time documentation.

The real organisational hurdle is the seven-day deadline, not the existence of the paperwork. Handwritten timesheets collected at the end of the month and typed up in the office fail it structurally. With three sites, changing temporary staff and a sickness call at 6:40 that upends half the morning, falling behind is the normal state. Run the planned route and the actual working time in the same system and the record arrives as a by-product of dispatch.

What should be ready for an inspection

• Employment contracts with the agreed weekly hours, including for mini-jobbers, pensioners and relief drivers
• Working time records with start, end and duration per working day and per employee
• Rosters and route plans for the whole inspection period
• Payslips and payment records for cross-checking against the recorded hours
• For vehicles with more than nine seats, the tachograph data as well
• Evidence that the records were created within the seven-day deadline
• A vehicle list with the seat count including driver and the resulting set of rules. It answers in minutes why no tachograph data exists for part of the fleet