[jobigoud]

In practice the extra time worked above the 35 hours goes into a different counter that you typically take one or two days at a time rather than batch it along the rest. Also it's fairly rare for people to take their 5 vacation weeks in one setting, the employer still has a say and you still have to coordinate with colleagues.

[koyote]

That is a good point, although I used to work for a US multinational with people based in France and they often took 3-4 weeks in one go. More than that might be pushing it a bit.