Discriminatory treatment of foreign-language assistants in Italian universities

8.11.2019

Question for written answer E-003750/2019
to the Commission
Rule 138
Elisabetta Gualmini (S&D), Brando Benifei (S&D), Pierfrancesco Majorino (S&D)

In 1989, the CJEU ruled in favour of Pilar Allué, who had filed a complaint that when compared to the regulations in force for Italian lecturers, the Italian law governing contracts for foreign-language assistants in Italian universities was discriminatory. A 1993 judgment confirmed that discrimination did indeed exist, exacerbated by the fact that foreign-language assistants were not represented in any way in collective bargaining bodies. The Court found against Italy in 2001 for failure to comply (C-212/99) and again in 2006 (C 119/04), when Italy only escaped a financial penalty by adopting – at the last moment – Legislative Decree No 2/2004. Law 240/2010 (the ‘Gelmini Law’) and Law 167/2017 have been adopted subsequently. The implementation decree of the Ministry of Education, Universities and Research of 6 August 2019 established the standard model for contracts for foreign-language assistants, while Law 37/2019 deferred until 31 October 2019 the deadline by which universities must comply with this.

In 2011 an EU Pilot procedure (2079/2011/EMPL) was opened to ascertain whether or not Italian laws on this matter comply with EU legislation, and in particular with Article 45 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union.

In light of the aforementioned, can the Commission answer the following questions:

– What is its assessment of the relevant legislative provisions in Italy?

– Is the complainant kept constantly informed about all the stages in the Pilot procedure?

– Is the Commission assessing carefully the potentially discriminatory effects of the aforementioned legislation, in view too of the long history of discrimination against foreign-language assistants?