Italy threatened with court over foreign lecturers

Date: 09/01/03

THE European Commission has threatened legal action against Italy for allegedly breaking the Union's non-discrimination rules.

It has warned that Rome faces court unless it takes steps to end its long-running dispute with foreign lecturers. The move is the latest twist in a saga involving 1,500 foreign university lecturers who have fought for 15 years to have their EU rights recognised in Italy.

In 1983, the European Court of Justice (ECJ) ruled that the teachers should have the same open-ended contracts as their Italian counterparts. But despite three ECJ rulings and criticism from MEPs and the European Commission, Rome has refused to offer foreign lecturers the same conditions as their peers.

The Commission's decision was welcomed by one of the lecturers, David Petrie, who has taught English at the University of Verona since 1984 and is chairman of the Association of Foreign Lecturers in Italy.

Petrie, 50, said: "The two pillars of the Treaty are "free movement of goods" and "free movement of persons". Our case makes a mockery of the latter. The whole system needs to be reformed. A system which allows one member state to abuse its "host" workers from all the other states for at least 14 years cannot be in any conceivable way be labelled a "Union" or a "community".

"If I were in Silvio Berlusconi's shoes, I would try to save money while finding a reasonable solution. With the Commission poised to take Italy back to the ECJ for mega-fines, his government now finds itself between a rock and a hard place. They will have to settle."

The European Commission has threatened legal action against Italy for allegedly breaking the EU's non-discrimination rules.