ROME - As many as 20 foreign lecturers working in Italy are to be paid arrears on unpaid wages totalling 5 million euros as the first step by universities to compensate for the historic poor treatment of foreign lettori in Italy, the ALLSI trade union said Wednesday. 

  Meanwhile, Ursula Von Der Leyen, as part of her tour of the 27 European capitals to publicly test the EU digital Covid certificate and promote NextGenerationEU, on Tuesday visited the historic Cinecittà studios in Rome with Italian PM Mario Draghi.

  The visit to Cinecittà was organised to highlight the 300 million euros that has been allocated for the post-Covid recovery of the studios - just one part of the 6.68 billion euros earmarked for the culture and tourism section of Italy’s National Recovery and Resilience Plan (PNRR).

  Of Italy’s 235.1 billion euro PNRR, 204.5 billion euros will be coming from the EU’s NextGenerationEU (191.5 billion from the Recovery and Resilience Facility and 13 billion from REACT-EU), the largest amount allotted to any European country.

  With these huge payments incoming, Italy have attempted to break a 30 year deadlock on discrimination against foreign lecturers working at Italian universities in offering, though an inter-ministerial decree law, co-financing to assist universities in the payouts of unpaid wages to foreign university professors. The decree law was presented by the Ministry of Education, University and Research in collaboration with the Ministry of Economy and Finance.

  The European Court of Justice repeatedly found Italy in breach of EU Treaty by not guaranteeing equal treatment concerning wages, pension rights, contract duration and access to jobs for foreign professors and lecturers working in Italian universities.

  So far only the University of Milan has taken steps to reach any kind of deal with the maltreated foreign lettori, though it looks like no university, apart from possibly Milan, will be ready to meet the June 30 deadline for paying the salary arrears. If the deadline is not met next Wednesday the decree law would fall unless prorogued by the government, something which has already happened before, when the law was first enacted in 2017.

  In a meeting Monday between lettori and trade unions to discuss the details of a supplementary contract that needs to be signed before funds can be released, 20 foreign lettori of Milan University (among them Austrians, Belgians, Britons, French, Spaniards and Russians) were offered arrears in unpaid wages of a total of 5 million euros with individual pay-outs ranging from 100,000 to 350,000 euros. However, the total sum of payouts that the government’s decree law stipulates for co-financing is 8,705,000 euros and there are another 20 universities where lettori are entitled to arrears. The funds for these payouts will be heavily depleted. 

  David Petrie, the chair of ALLSI (Association of Foreign Lecturers in Italy) who represents the majority of Milan lettori and has for over 30 years been fighting for the much-ignored rights of foreign lecturers in Italy, said “we are grateful to the University of Milan for its efforts in moving towards a resolution and also to the input of the CGIL trade union, at yesterday’s meeting. We hope that agreement is reached in Milan university  before the 30 June and that Ursula Von Der Leyen’s Commission will closely monitor the ongoing breaches of EU law in the other universities. 

  “The persistent flouting of not only basic rights but rights that have already been adjudicated upon has persisted under the watch of too many Commissions and too many Italian governments,” Prof. Petrie told the Insider.

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