The cuts at Catania were decided and effectuated by the outgoing administration. Our hope now is that the new administration will review the quesion, individuate the blatant error of judgment that led to the decision and revoke the deliberation.

The above cases clearly depict a tendency among Italian unversities to manage budget cuts by ensuring that it is the foreign staff who bear the brunt of the "austerity". This has been facilitated by the unsatisfactory legal situation, as the article also makes clear. The involvement of European institutions is most welcome, but it needs to be made clear to the Italian government that any further backsliding on this issue is unacceptable.

The Gelmini Law is just the most extreme form yet – and the most clearly illegal – of the delaying tactics that Italy and its universities have adopted for decades to discriminate against foreign-language lecturers, Lettori. Gelmini was a minister under Berlusconi – who better to learn from in turning the country’s dysfunctional legal system to advantage in gaining effective impunity? There is a LAW on the Statute book, No. 63/2004, introduced by Italy to get off the hook and avoid swingeing fines, at the time that a second infringement proceeding was brought by the European Commission over the Lettori issue. That law only needs to be applied by the universities for this whole business to be settled. The Gelmini Law provision on Lettori was a desperate chicanery to put that eventuality off, given that the widespread litigation by Lettori was in places at last coming to an end in their favour, after many years of costly wrangling through the seeming interminable series of different courts. The Italian State and its universities have a simple policy on Lettori: they want us worn down in the courts, retired or dead (how many so far, I wonder? – 2 colleagues in Milan have died already before seeing the end of their interminable court cases). So what could they do but come up with the Gelmini Law? Yes, it’s grotesque, but it’ll waste more years of our lives, wear a few more people down, see even more Lettori retire or die, and that’s all they care about. The only thing which would change their minds is serious political and economic pressure from the other Member States whose citizens are being thus mistreated, and from the European Commission in the form of another infringement proceeding – the third! Hello, Brussels! – is there anybody there who cares about the future of the European project?

Clearly,  we lettori at Bergamo University were only the northern tip of the iceberg. Now Catania and Salento. Who’ll be next?In April 2008, after fourteen years in litigation, our salaries were finally brought in line with those of other Italian university teachers as the result of a court ruling. We thought justice was finally being done, and that all the time, effort and money that we’d been putting into our court case was finally paying off. Alas, this sense of justice was short-lived. Very short-lived, indeed: only 3 years.  In April 2011, the University promptly used the made-to-measure Gelmini Law to slash our salaries by up to 60%. Needless to say, with an utterly devastating effect on our lives. Back to square one. Back to being paid a pittance and denied a salary we are legally entitled to, certified by Italian courts and negated by Italian universities, with the backing of an Italian law.Not only has the Gelmini Law wiped out our salaries, it also wiped out our right – the right of a group of non-Italian nationals - to seek redress in the Italian courts, something no country which calls itself a democracy should tolerate, and which no union of democratic countries should tolerate, either. The EU would prefer the matter to be sorted out locally without having to intervene directly, but surely the time has come for direct intervention. If the EU does actually exist in practice, that is, and not just on paper. After all, if parity of treatment and freedom of movement for workers within the EU doesn’t exist for language teachers, then who can it exist for?The Gelmini Law  is simply the last in a long line of very similar laws. In a quarter of a century, we’ve seen our rights constantly bypassed by ad-hoc measures taken by successive Italian governments – left as well as right - which appear to comply with European law against discrimination, but in actual fact evade its implementation.All previous Italian governments have ever done is simplysidestep the issue and play for time to drag things out the duration of the current government in order to pass the buck on to the next. In the meantime, we’ll get rid of a few more of these nuisance-making foreigners who’ll either retire or run out of money to pay legal fees or simply die. The only difference now is that there is no next government to pass the buck on to. And probably won’t be for some time. Perhaps we should ask President Napolitano to appoint an eleventh ‘wise man’ (or even a ‘wise woman’, perhaps) to examine the unsolved lettori issue?By the way, of the seventeen lettori at Bergamo involved in litigation, only 7 are still working: 8 have retired, 1 has got another job and 1 has died. It rather looks like Italy’s policy so far is working, isn’t it? Susan PerzolliUniversity of Bergamo 

Clearly,  we lettori at Bergamo University were only the northern tip of the iceberg. Now Catania and Salento. Who’ll be next?In April 2008, after fourteen years in litigation, our salaries were finally brought in line with those of other Italian university teachers as the result of a court ruling. We thought justice was finally being done, and that all the time, effort and money that we’d been putting into our court case was finally paying off. Alas, this sense of justice was short-lived. Very short-lived, indeed: only 3 years.  In April 2011, the University promptly used the made-to-measure Gelmini Law to slash our salaries by up to 60%. Needless to say, with an utterly devastating effect on our lives. Back to square one. Back to being paid a pittance and denied a salary we are legally entitled to, certified by Italian courts and negated by Italian universities, with the backing of an Italian law.Not only has the Gelmini Law wiped out our salaries, it also wiped out our right – the right of a group of non-Italian nationals - to seek redress in the Italian courts, something no country which calls itself a democracy should tolerate, and which no union of democratic countries should tolerate, either. The EU would prefer the matter to be sorted out locally without having to intervene directly, but surely the time has come for direct intervention. If the EU does actually exist in practice, that is, and not just on paper. After all, if parity of treatment and freedom of movement for workers within the EU doesn’t exist for language teachers, then who can it exist for?The Gelmini Law  is simply the last in a long line of very similar laws. In a quarter of a century, we’ve seen our rights constantly bypassed by ad-hoc measures taken by successive Italian governments – left as well as right - which appear to comply with European law against discrimination, but in actual fact evade its implementation.All previous Italian governments have ever done is simplysidestep the issue and play for time to drag things out the duration of the current government in order to pass the buck on to the next. In the meantime, we’ll get rid of a few more of these nuisance-making foreigners who’ll either retire or run out of money to pay legal fees or simply die. The only difference now is that there is no next government to pass the buck on to. And probably won’t be for some time. Perhaps we should ask President Napolitano to appoint an eleventh ‘wise man’ (or even a ‘wise woman’, perhaps) to examine the unsolved lettori issue?By the way, of the seventeen lettori at Bergamo involved in litigation, only 7 are still working: 8 have retired, 1 has got another job and 1 has died. It rather looks like Italy’s policy so far is working, isn’t it? Susan PerzolliUniversity of Bergamo