Makes sense; nobody is going to tell you it's not your job to get somewhere you are being payed to be.
I like the idea, but i get the feeling the implementation will result in no major benefit for anyone.
Edit: I'm an idiot and i understand now :-)
(I think. I'vec not had a job like this.)
For ordinary folks who have a fixed workplace every day this ruling has zero impact.
(Using US examples in the following, because probably the majority of the readers understand it better than European cities, even though it does not apply to the US).
Say you are living in NYC where your company is based. Every day you get an email telling you where you have to install a new security system. One day it might be Brooklyn, one day it might be Washinton D.C, because everything is being managed from the central NYC office.
Why exactly should traveling to and between the appointment (say Newark in the morning, Bronx in the evening) not be considered work? The employee is not living 4 hours away from the first appointment because he wants to own a bigger house, but because his employer has told him to work there.
The net result of this could easily be workers being required to travel to and from a central location as a workaround, when they could have better outcomes travelling straight from home - hurting the people you are supposedly want to help.
As you say, if the company has a fixed office at the centre of that radius, they can still tell the worker that their days begin when they arrive at the office, and then the 'worktime' begins once they get there, ready to travel out to the first customer. That's how many businesses operate anyway — and how the business at the centre of this case used to work. The case was brought once they closed that office down.
A better example would be:
Say you live in the Bronx, and you sign on to a company that installs fire alarm systems that has branch offices in Manhattan and Newark. You report to the office in Manhattan daily before your first appointment and return there after your last appointment, performing installations and maintenance in Manhattan. The company decides that keeping the Manhattan office open isn't cost-effective, so they close that office and tell you to report to the Newark office instead.
Under this ruling, you aren't considered working only for the time it took to get to the now-closed Manhattan office; the extra commute time added directly due to the office closure is now considered "on the clock".
This will make the cost of running a business in a big city a little more worthwhile in the EU, and will somewhat depress the commercial real estate market.
Now I am US citizen so this doesn't help me any but this is a global job and the same circumstances exist in Europe as they do here for working field service jobs. I gave just one small example, but think about all the plumbers, HVAC, electricians, construction workers, highway crews, that all have to travel to the job site. Their employer bids on jobs that are often very far from their homes and the shop.
It really sucks having to bust ass for 12 hours a day and have an hour or more commute back home, or back to the shop everyday after work. It sucks even more that it's unpaid, but until now people just had to accept as being a norm.
I'm certain there will need to be adjustments in labor rate/job bids to accommodate this, but the hopeful in me is that it's worth it.
edit: sorry I saw your edit after I posted.
Yup, I'd say so. It's up to an employer to decide whether someone's good enough to be worth paying their travel expenses. In my company's case, traveling expenses are about a quarter of people's wages (or maybe that's just me). Lease cars and such. We've had colleagues that had a two hour commute here, who stayed with the company not because they liked the commute, but because they liked the company and the company paid for their travel expenses. In higher-end IT, people are worth their weight in gold, and one has to do anything to get and keep them.