Italian MP challenges government false claim that discriminated foreign lecturers received compensation

 ROME –  Italian MP Elisabetta Piccolotti has tabled a question in the Chamber of Deputies asking the Minister for University and Research, Anna Maria Bernini, for information on what money earmarked by the Italian state to pay salary arrears due to British and other foreign lecturers has actually been paid and in which universities. The Government claims that it has paid off foreign lecturers, known as lettori, to compensate for decades of discrimination against them in Italian universities, but union officials say hundreds of lettori still have not been compensated. 

 The formal question to the minister by Ms Picolotti, a deputy for the SInistra Italiana party in the Alleanza Verde e Sinistra grouping, on June 13, follows another question tabled to the European Commission in Brussels on April 14 by the Irish MEP Michael McNamara asking the Commission to check and ensure that settlements due to former lettori in Italian universities to compensate them for discrimination have actually been made. To date the Commission has not replied, according to David Petrie, the head of the ALLSI trade union of foreign lecturers working in Italy.

 Both Italy and the Commission evidently have been muddying the waters at the expense of the long suffering lettori, observers say.

 The European Commission wrote to Prof. Petre  on June 20, asserting : “Please note that the Italian authorities confirmed again on 9 May, 2025, their previous position stating that the careers of all eligible former lettori whose career had not been previously reconstructed, were reconstructed under D.M.688/2023. The Italian authorities explained in detail the steps that they have taken to make sure that all eligible former lettori were identified and received reconstruction of their careers.”

 Prof. Petrie replied to the Commission saying “We unequivocally refute this.”

 “I have supplied the Commission with information  and empirical evidence concerning the universities of Bari, Basilicata, Bologna, Catania, Florence, Milan, Padua, Pisa, Rome La Sapienza, Salerno, Siena, Turin, Venice and Verona showing the actual situation,” Prof. Petrie said.

 A date is yet to be fixed for the 7th lettori case to be heard in the ECJ: The Court of Justice declined to fine Italy for its failure to pay the lecturers, in case C-119/04 18 July 2006. The Court of Justice pointed out that the burden of proof lay with the Commission to challenge the assertion made at paragraph 42, "the Italian Government produced detailed tables relating to how such recognition had been put into effect in each of those universities.”

 Prof. Petrie said: “That unchallenged assertion was not true on July 18, 2006, and it is not true today.”

 Readers will recall that the European Commission failed in its attempt to close down ALLSI’s petition in the European Parliament, in January 2014 - https://www.italianinsider.it/?q=node/2004

 Closure was opposed by Romanian MEP Victor Boştinaru. The MEP asked to see lettori pay slips as a simple way of proving whether the discrimination was ongoing.

 Following on from this simple formula – “follow the money” you can look at the payslips and the pension slips and you can see at a glance who has been paid and who has not.

 Prof. Petrie added that “We have already supplied the current  Romanian Commissioner responsible for the case,  Roxana Mînzatu, with exemplary evidence unequivocally refuting the assertions produced by the Italian authorities that her officials appear to be unwilling to question or even examine or challenge.”

 “The buck stops with the Commissioner herself. For this reason we are registering a ‘formal complaint’ and requesting a meeting with her, to see how she is going to provide a concrete and practical effective remedy to the biggest case of mass discrimination on the grounds of nationality in the history of the European Union.”

 “This case has dragged on for over 40 years; what is now at stake is the so-called right of EU citizens to receive equal and fair wages and pensions inside the so-called EU  single market,” Prof. Petrie said.

 jp