Süzen v Zehnacker Gebäudereinigung GmbH (1997) C-13/95 is a European Union labour law case concerning transfers of undertakings, and the job security rights of employees.
Ms Süzen worked for a Zehnacker, a cleaning company in a private school of Bad Godesberg.
The ‘transfer must relate to a stable economic entity whose activity is not limited to performing one specific works contract’ (Case C-48/94 Rygaard [1995] ECR I-2745, paragraph 20) and an entity is ‘an organized grouping of persons and assets facilitating the exercise of an economic activity which pursues a specific objective’.
[2] 14 In order to determine whether the conditions for the transfer of an entity are met, it is necessary to consider all the facts characterizing the transaction in question, including in particular [1.]
However, all those circumstances are merely single factors in the overall assessment which must be made and cannot therefore be considered in isolation (see, in particular, Spijkers and Redmond Stichting, paragraphs 13 and 24 respectively).The ECJ further held that the loss of a customer does not mean that the undertaking will ‘thereby cease fully to exist’.