Sort of the same in France, or at least the employer is largely pushed to do so. If you don't take 12 consecutive days of vacations between May and October (among other conditions), you get 2 extra days of vacations, for free. It's called 'jours de fractionnement'

Never heard that before.

I know this to be true in Switzerland, and only in banking. Where it has to do with detecting fraud in your absence.

I've lived in Germany the last few years, I never heard of this, not saying it's not true but it's defo not enforced

It totally depends on the company. But if pull something like burnout, you should be careful to cover your story why you were not able to relax properly.

I think you have this backwards, it was explained to me that the employer cannot refuse a consecutive vacation of up to 2 weeks, not that the employee has an obligation to take it as such.

No, the employee is also required to do that by law.

The only case i encountered a rule like this was at a bank that is a customer of my employer. full-time employees must take 2 weeks of consecutive vacation and they are not permitted to access the systems in that time(for this period logins are disabled). But thats an company policy, that was introduced after an scandal.

Got some further info? I can only find reports that this is common misinterpretation.

https://www.rechtsindex.de/arbeitsrecht/490-jahresurlaub-mus...