Lecturer Set to Win Fight With Italy

A Scottish lecturer is poised to win a 15-year legal battle to improve the rights of foreigners working in Italy, which could result in a multi-million dollar fine for the country’s government.

The European Commission is expected to shortly announce financial sanctions against the Italian government for discriminating against non-Italian foreign-language lecturers working in its universities.

It will impose the fines unless it agrees to comply with EU laws that guarantee university staff from other member states the same employment rights and conditions as those enjoyed by Italian colleagues.

If Italian authorities do not back down, it would be only the second the commission has imposed such fines.

The moves marks success for a David Petrie, a 51-year-old graduate of Dundee University in Scotland and chairman of the Association of Foreign Lecturers in Italy (ALLSI).

He has led a lonely campaign against discrimination on pay, employment conditions and access to academic posts.
The ALLSI represents hundreds of foreign-language lecturers who teach in Italy’s 63 state universities.

He has successfully argued in the European Court of Justice that Italy is in breach of parity rights enshrined in European equal treatment legislation.

Last October, the commission decided the Italian government should be sent a “reasoned opinion” by 16 January—the final step before asking the court to impose fines.

“Theoretically, the Italians could come up with measures in the next few days which would put their house in order,” said Mr Petrie. “But there is no evidence to suggest they are going to do that.”

Italian officials estimate the fines could amount to $13 million if they are backdated to 1997, when the breach was first identified.
A member of the faculty of modern languages at Verona University, Mr. Petrie is writing a book about his legal saga, provisionally titled “The Rubber Wall” because he was told he would be “bouncing off a rubber wall for the next 20 years” if he took on the Italian establishment.

“Even if something catastrophic happened and the commission backed down, I would be able to say that it’s only a theoretical right that EU citizens can go to another country to work and get parity of rights,” he said.

Noreen Burrows, Jean Monnet professor of European law at Glasgow University, said the case is “very significant.” She said the commission’s capacity to ask that a member state be fined for breach of community law had only been imposed once, when Greece was penalized for violating environmental law.

“It’s meant to encourage member states to comply. It’s a last resort for the commission,” said Professor Burrows. “More often than not governments would have settled a long time before. This is the sledgehammer approach.”

She praised Mr. Petrie for the “consistent pressure” he put on the Italian state, the commission and the British government.

“It has been tremendously energy consuming for David. Almost his entire life has been devoted to the case,” she said. “To try and get a government to comply with a court ruling is very difficult if it has decided it is not
going to.

“It’s not like you could put a government in prison. So the ultimate sanctions are quite weak against a state.”