The European Court of Justice (TJUE) has ruled that Spain's existing measures to compensate public sector workers subjected to repeated temporary contracts fall short of EU standards, finding that current remedies — including the so-called "indefinite non-permanent" employment status, severance pay, and competitive hiring processes — fail to adequately penalise abusive practices or remedy their consequences. The ruling, issued in response to questions referred by Spain's Supreme Court, affects an estimated 125,000 workers believed to be trapped in chains of temporary contracts, out of a broader pool of up to 800,000 temporary public employees. Spain's government has dismissed the decision as a "merely clarifying" ruling that does not oblige it to change national legislation, though the European Commission had already frozen €626 million in recovery fund payments to Madrid last year over the same issue.