European Commission pulls plug on lettori rights battle

 ROME — The European Commission has unexpectedly decided to abandon a court case involving non-Italian language lecturers in Italy, dealing a blow to their 30-year battle for fair and equal wages and pensions. Mario Nava, director general for employment, social affairs and inclusion, wrote to David Petrie, 73, the chairman of the Association of Foreign Lecturers in Italy (ALLSI), informing him that on the basis of “information received and statements made by the Italian authorities” his grievances had been resolved.

 The Commission had therefore decided to withdraw its application from the European Court of Justice. Owing to unspecified “exceptional circumstances”, Nava said, the complainants could not be informed in advance about the decision to withdraw.

 Unfortunately, for many of the former foreign language lecturers, known as lettori, Nava’s assurance does not correspond to their experience.

 “It is absolutely impossible to give any credence to this statement at all,” Prof. Petrie said. “On 31 March 2025, accompanied by my lawyer, Prof. Lorenzo Picotti, I met with Francesco Corti, a member of Roxana Mînzatu’s cabinet, in their office in Brussels, with documented evidence of pay slips, pension slips and tax returns of lettori still awaiting compensation.” Mînzatu, who is from Romania, is the European Commissioner responsible for education, labour and social rights.

 Prof. Petrie said the Commission may have wanted to do a favour to the government of Giorgia Meloni, the Italian prime minister, to keep her on board over tariff negotiations between the EU and Donald Trump. Alternatively, they may have caved to the Italian university lobby.

 “There’s certainly been some interference at the top level. The university lobby is a very formidable group of people,” Prof. Petrie said.

 Prof. Petrie said it reminded him of previous disappointments. “Family lives are being ruined, many have gone to the grave uncompensated, others are destitute, deprived of their proper pension. In the 2006 case the Commission failed to put the evidence to the court and now that it is in possession of even more evidence it wants to avoid facing the court altogether, a grotesque derogation of its duty,” he said.

 Avv. Picotti, ALLSI’s longstanding lawyer, was also critical. “The Commission only takes into account the arguments put forward by the Italian government, it does not consider evidence provided by ALLSI and other lecturers, or show that any 'useful result' has been demonstrated at all,” he said.

 Prof. Petrie, who was born in Dumbarton and studied at the University of Glasgow, has been fighting for lecturers’ rights since he began working at the University of Verona in the early 1980s.

 He had previously taught English at the University of Benghazi in Libya, where work conditions were excellent. “It was the first time I saw corruption in exams, and not the last time,” he said.

 The problem of discrimination, illegal under EU single market rules, emerged shortly after he took up his job at Verona University in 1984. He was advised by Noreen Burrows, a friend who was a professor of law at Glasgow University, that his treatment amounted to discrimination on the basis of nationality, and decided to take the case to the European Parliament.

 Backed by Hugh McMahon, an MEP for Strathclyde West, he managed to get a petition in defence of the lecturers’ rights presented to the Euro-parliament.

 “The 30th anniversary of the petition was on July 14,” Petrie said.

 The university took a dim view of the lecturers’ lobbying in Strasbourg. “They took our names out of the internal phone book and off our office doors and removed all the furniture, putting us in a single room in the basement,” he recalled. “They said it was because of asbestos. A very strange asbestos that only affected non-Italians.”

 Among the campaigners was the author Tim Parks, who accompanied the group on their first coach trip to Strasbourg. Parks was glad to benefit from the fruits of the campaign but not one of the most committed militants.

 “I think he was following his own agenda. He thought he might get a good story out of this,” Petrie said. A fictionalised account of the trip appeared in Parks’ 1997 novel Europa.

 Petrie was a founder member of ALLSI, which was set up in 1997. He believes it has recovered between 50 million euros and 60 million euros for non-Italian language lecturers of all nationalities.

 “The number of people still not compensated is between 150 and 200. It’s hard to calculate the amount of money involved, as some have been compensated in part. I would say the average amount owed would be around 150,000euros,” he said. “We are a self-extinguishing group of workers.”

 jp-ppw