College Executive Vice-President and Commissioner for Social Affairs, Roxana Mînzatu, has replied to the latest parliamentary question from Irish MEP Cynthia Ní Mhurchú on the Commission’s conduct of a third infringement proceedings against Italy for discrimination against non-national university teachers(Lettori) and the grounds for its abrupt decision to suddenly close the case. The discrimination was found contrary to EU law in four clear-cut rulings of the Court of Justice, the first of which dates back to 1989.
The Ní Mhurchú question, which was placed in December 2025, is a follow-up to an earlier priority question of October 2025, in its turn a follow-up to a still earlier question of March 2025. The sequence of the questioning highlights the tension between the European Parliament’s position that the Commission should be accountable for its conduct of the infringement proceedings and the Commission’s resistance to scrutiny of its decisions.
Compatibility of Italy’s Lettori legislation with EU law
A measure of the Commission’s resistance to questioning of its conduct of the Lettori infringement case is that it failed to address Ní Mhurchú’s question on the compatibility of a prescription condition in Italy’s Ministerial Decree No 688/2023 with EU law at the first and second time of asking. This decree is the legislation through which Italy purported to end discrimination against the Lettori and to implement the second infringement ruling of the Court of Justice, a ruling which awarded the Lettori uninterrupted settlements for decades of discriminatory treatment from the date of first employment.
The Ministerial Decree subjects the settlements due to the Lettori to a domestic prescription or statute of limitations condition and thus limits the number of years for which they are entitled to settlements. This is tantamount, as Ní Mhurchú pointed out in the first of her questions “to a position that the Treaty right of non-national workers to parity of treatment can be circumscribed by domestic law.”
Ní Mhurchú’s frustration at the Commission’s evasive answers comes over in the wording of her third question on the legal point at stake: “ Will the Commission give a ‘yes’ or ‘no’ answer to the question of whether it considers the limit to the years for which Lettori are entitled to backdated settlements for discrimination, prescribed in Decree Law 688, to be in conformity with EU law”?
To this question Commissioner Minzatu responded as follows:
“With respect to the rules regarding the prescription period in Ministerial Decree No 688/2023 of 24 May 20231, the Italian authorities indicated in the framework of case C-519/232 [the third infringement case] that the Ministerial Decree does not subject the settlements due to the Lettori to a new prescription or statute of limitations.”
From an attentive reading of both question and answer two things emerge clearly. The first is the acknowledgement that there is a prescription period regulated in accordance with Italian rules in the terms of the Ministerial Decree. The second is that the Ní Mhurchú question clearly concerns the compatibility with EU law of this prescription period and not with some new Lettori-specific provision on prescription, as the Commission, deferring to the position of the Italian authorities, insinuates.
At 6,440 words, Ministerial Decree No 688/2023 is almost 3,000 words longer than the Court of Justice sentence in the second infringement ruling against Italy, which it purports to implement. Lengthy though the decree is, one would assume that the Commission, as Guardian of the Treaties, would examine its provisions carefully, in particular Article 3.1.c. on the quantification of the settlements due to Lettori for decades of discriminatory treatment. Though the Court sentence places no limitations on the settlements due to Letttori, Article 3.1.c states that in the calculation of the settlements due “the quantification shall not take into account the sums for which the relevant right has elapsed”. This qualification was used by universities to limit to five years the settlements for discriminatory treatment due to Lettori, the average of whose years of service exceeds 30 years.
The Census of Discriminatory Conditions in Italian universities
Ní Mhurchú, in point n.2 of her question, asks the Commission why it refused to examine the data in the Census which proved persistent discrimination against Lettori in Italian universities. Why the Census was taken is best explained in the context of the circumstances which gave rise to what is an unprecedented third infringement case for the same breach of EU law.
The founding Treaty of Rome (1957) made provision for just one-stage infringement proceedings against Member States in perceived breach of Treaty obligations. In the idealism of the times the signatories perhaps assumed that Member States would automatically obey eventual Court of Justice infringement rulings. When it became clear that this idealism was misplaced, provision was made in the Treaty of Maastricht(1992) for second-stage enforcement proceedings and the imposition of fines by the Court on Member States which ignored its infringement rulings. Together these two provisions were intended to ensure Member State compliance with Treaty obligations.
In the Lettori case the Court found Italy guilty of discrimination in its first infringement ruling of 2001. In the follow-on enforcement case the Grand Chamber of the Court in its 2006 sentence again found Italy guilty of discrimination as it had not implemented the 2001 ruling within the deadline given in the Commission’s reasoned opinion. In the interval between the deadline and the hearing before the 13 judges of the Court’s Grand Chamber, Italy introduced a last-minute law to purportedly end the discrimination.
Before the judges could impose fines they had to ascertain whether the settlements for years of discriminatory treatment provided for under the provisions of the last-minute law had in fact been made. Italy claimed that the correct settlements had been made. The Court pointedly noted that as the Commission depositions did not contain information from the Lettori to counter this claim it could not impose the fines requested.
If it is to the Commission’s credit that it opened a third infringement case against Italy when it became clear that the correct settlements had not been made, it is also a consequence of the Commission’s negligence in its conduct of the enforcement case that an unprecedented third case was opened. The moral for the conduct of the third case was made clear by another Irish MEP, Michael Mc Namara, in his question to the Commission. To prevent a recurrence of the unfortunate outcome in the second infringement case, Mc Namara requested that “the Commission check university by university with the foreign language lecturers to ensure that the correct settlements due under EU law have been made”.
The Census conducted by Asso.CEL.L, a Rome-based Lettori organization and FLC CGIL, Italy’s largest trade union, collected data on settlements in the Italian universities. Among the universities Milan stands out as an example of a university which correctly implemented the Court of Justice sentence, awarding its Lettori uninterrupted settlements for discriminatory treatment in an agreement signed by the rector with FLC CGIL. Although contracts and working conditions are similar in other universities surveyed in the Census, these universities have not followed the example of Milan and thus remain in breach of the Treaty provision on parity of treatment.
Although the Commission had initially requested to see the Census results, it subsequently informed FLC CGIL by letter that it would not examine the data. In its reply to MEP Ní Mhurchú the Commission stated that it had instead passed the received data to “the Italian authorities requesting their reaction”. It added that the Italian authorities then explained the steps they had taken “to ensure that all eligible former lettori were identified and received reconstruction of their careers”. The Commission closed the case shortly afterwards.
Implications and future developments
To those who presume that safeguards and practices in their domestic legal systems carry over into the conduct of infringement proceedings, the Commission’s conduct of the Lettori case will likely come as a surprise. It will surprise that the Commission refused to examine evidence from the complainant Lettori and instead passed it to the Italian authorities for interpretation and then deferred to their interpretation. It will further surprise that the Commission, in response to questions from elected representatives of the Lettori in the European Parliament on its conduct of the third infringement case, evaded the questions placed and instead responded by presenting the position of the Italian authorities -what Italy said.
From 1 July to 31 December 2026, Ireland will assume the Presidency of the Council of the European Union. To best fulfill its Presidency role, the Government invited submissions from individuals and organizations so as to identify EU-wide issues, themes, and policy areas to which it should give particular attention. In response to this invitation, Asso.CEL.L presented a submission.
With specific reference to the Lettori case, Asso.CEL.L has long argued that existing procedures for the conduct of infringement proceedings do not deliver Treaty justice, particularly in the face of non-cooperation from an intransigent Member State. The submission makes the point that the procedures in force work to the advantage of the Member State in breach and against the interests of EU citizens.
The submission was published on the web site of the Department of Foreign Affairs last month.. It will be supplemented by additional documentation in the coming weeks. This additional documentation will include among other things the Asso.CEL.L open letter on the Lettori case to President of the Commission, Ursula von der Leyen and selected coverage of the case from The European Times and other quality titles.
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