France lambasts Rome on lecturer pay

French Ambassador Alain Le Roy

ROME -- France's Ambassador has echoed UK calls for Italian education minister Maria Chiara Carrozza to put an end to “illegal” discrimination against foreign university lecturers.

In a letter addressed to a French lecturer teaching at Catania University, Sylvain Itté, minister for French citizens abroad, acknowledged the “difficult position” in which the Gelmini law had placed foreign lecturers, downgraded to the status of language technicians.

According to reports published in The Times and other newspapers, application of the Gelmini legislation has seen 31 British and 58 other non-Italian lecturers take pay cuts of up to 6o percent. They are denied equal pay and pensions rights by a law which the European Court of Justice has ruled illegal six times.

In his letter, Itté said that the law was not only having an impact on French lecturers based in Italy but that it reflected the broader problem of Italy’s application of EU legislation relating to non-racial discrimination and to the free movement of workers. He reported that the French ambassador in Rome, Alain Le Roy, had written to raise the problem with Carrozza.

Last month French authorities also aired concern with the Italian minister’s representatives, who re reported to have agreed that the legislation was dissatisfactory. Itté expressed his faith that the negotiations would lead to a robust application of EU law and improvements to the lecturers’ remuneration.

Carrozza has admitted that parts of the Gelmini legislation need altering but has shown consistent reluctance to play a decisive role in bringing about change. Foreign Office Minister of State David Liddington assured David Petrie, head of the Association of Foreign Lecturers in Italy last month that Britain intended to raise the lecturers’ plight with the recently-instated Italian government. European Commission officials indicated in December that infringement proceedings could force Italy to pay the European Court fines of as much as 300,000 euros a day.

UK Prime Minister David Cameron assured one of the lecturers who is from his parliamentary constituency that he was “keen to help” find a solution and that the Embassy was “working hard to resolve the issue” and would continue to do so. UK Foreign Secretary William Hague has also called for changes to be made to the Gelmini law, saying, “Over a hundred foreign lecturers have been affected by this issue, which has continued for too long.”