Compensatory Weekly Rest

Tachograph, I went down a similar thought process to yourself and came to the following conclusions after a bit more contemplation.

Like you, I could not find any such offence as failing to compensate for reduced weekly rest- anywhere. Reducing weekly rest would appear to be, in effect, a derogation from regular weekly rest periods and so, if a driver does not comply with every requirement of the derogation, he is left with having had to comply with the full regular weekly rest requirements ie 45 hours.

If he fails to compensate he is then too late to go back to the week in which he reduced, to take the regular weekly rest he was required to take. The derogation in effect gives him 3 Fixed weeks to repay the “loan” that he has effectively taken out. If if fails to repay the loan then the week that reduction took place in, would be consequently short of the required 45 hours regular weekly rest and would therefore be an offence. Therefore the Sunday (the last day of the Fixed Week) of that reduced week would mark the offence date and not the Sunday 3 weeks later.

What rest he takes after that reduced week is irrelevant because, if he thinks he has taken a reduced weekly rest that week he will of course have had to take a regular weekly rest the week before and he week after (let’s assume he does!) to comply with the minimum requirements of Article 8(6).