byHenry Rogers
January 13, 2025
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Henry Rogers
Henry Rodgers teaches English at the University of “La Sapienza” in Rome and has published extensively on issues of discrimination.
Aso. Cell. The open letter to European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, dated January 14, 2025, is the latest of many expressions to help end decades of discrimination against foreign language teachers. no see(reader) from an Italian university. This is discrimination that continues in defiance of four clear rulings from the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU), the first of which was issued in 1989.
Myself actively participating reader This incident dates back to 1996. It lobbied Irish politicians to ask the Commission to open infringement proceedings against Italy for failing to implement the CJEU’s Allué case law. Pilar Allué, a Spanish national, achieved the first of her two victories on the court in 1989. Italy’s misinterpretation of the ruling forced her to appeal to the court again. In 1993, the court ruled in her favor a second time. It is essentially a treaty violation for which the Commission prosecuted Italy in a subsequent infringement case (C-212/99) and a subsequent enforcement case (C-119/04), and the Commission will prosecute Italy again. The case pending before the court (C-519/23) amounts to non-implementation of the 1993 Allué decision.
As part of my lobbying efforts with Irish politicians, I contacted the Joint Committee on European Affairs of Dáil Éireann, the Irish National Assembly, in Rome. In November 1996 I was invited by the Secretary of the Committee to come to Dublin and give evidence.
The clerk placed me in the waiting room, where I waited my turn to testify. I was able to watch the proceedings of the committee on closed-circuit television from the waiting room. At that moment I had a strong attack of stage fright. Among the committee members gathered in the room that day were some very prominent figures in Irish politics. I’ve been watching these characters on television my whole life, and after a few minutes it occurred to me that I had to leave the waiting room and speak in front of them.
Fortunately, the panic has passed. I must have done reasonably well, because the Committee unanimously decided to write to the Commissioner for Social Affairs urging him to initiate infringement proceedings on the grounds of discriminatory treatment against Italians. readerAbout what I testified.
One of the stories I subsequently dealt with with the Joint Committee was Italy’s reluctance to discuss this issue. reader This is a question about the public domain. The chairman of the committee at the time, Bernard Durkin TD, was known as a very fair and forthright politician. He bluntly told me that the committee had heard my opinion. reader Side, story. Now he planned to listen to the Italians.
To this end, he asked the Italian Ambassador to Ireland to testify. I was also invited and had the right to respond to the Ambassador’s testimony. I looked forward to that opportunity, but it never materialized. The ambassador did not appear before the joint committee because he had little knowledge of EU law.
At the time, I didn’t have much knowledge of EU law and I felt at a disadvantage. Hodges Figgis, a bookstore forever remembered for James Joyce’s novels UlyssesThere were many textbooks on EU law on the shelves. Having no legal training, I was ill-equipped to evaluate their merits.
What kept me warm EU law: text, examples and resourcesThis book, written by Professor Paul Craig and Professor Grainne De Burca, is Professor De Burca’s tribute to the textbook: “Do mo mháthair agus i gcuimhne m’athar”. This is Gaelic, my grandmother’s native language. The reason I bought the book was purely because of my love of language.
I concentrated on my studies. EU law: text, examples and resources. I had no exams or exams to measure my progress. So I was very happy when my co-author, my teacher, cited an article I had written about discrimination against lettori in the Journal of the Law Society of Ireland in the infringement chapter of the textbook. The editor, who clearly loves alliteration, gave the piece its title: retoire of law.
retoire of law It is an attempt to research legal history. reader This is the case from 1989 to February 2022, the date of publication of the work. The court first ruled against Allué on May 30, 1989, in a reference to the preliminary judgment case against Allué’s employer, Università Degli Studi di Venezia. Her victory should have ended discrimination. reader. Instead, it serves as an indicator, a starting point for measuring the persistence and duration of discrimination against our categories. Every year, with a kind of gallows humor, some of us gather on May 30, 1989, to commemorate Pilar Allué Day and the rise of discrimination against us.
Since legal consultations are available online, there is no need to explain all the details here. Allué has long retired from his professorship at the Università Degli Studi di Venezia. She retired without receiving the compensation for discrimination she deserved following her landmark victory before the CJEU. Her case continues to appear in EU law textbooks and, of course, in the Commission’s infringement cases for failure to implement Italian jurisprudence.
One particular case in the Allué family of cases that was brought to my attention in my letter to President von der Leyen is the decision in the Commission’s enforcement case against Italy: Case C-119/04. Of all the cases currently in progress, this case, heard by the Grand Chamber of 13 judges, was the one that attracted the most attention. It’s easy to understand why. The commission requested a daily fine of 309,750 euros for discriminatory treatment in Italy. reader. By the deadline set out in the reasoned opinion, Italy had not complied with the ruling in the previous infringement case, C-219/02.
Italy has enacted a last-minute law providing for settlement payments to people who: reader Because of the discriminatory treatment they suffered. Court acceptance of compliance with EU law has been somewhat lukewarm. In language used in the official English translation of the ruling, the judge noted that the law “cannot be regarded as providing an incorrect legal framework.” The language of the event was, of course, Italian. As one lawyer put it poignantly: “In cases of infringement, Member States enjoy the privilege of prosecution in their own language.”
With the final Italian law ruled to comply with EU law, only one issue remains to be resolved. This was a question of whether the agreement stipulated in the final law had actually been properly made. This issue is dealt with in paragraphs 43 and 45 of the 2006 judgment.
As I wrote in a letter to President von der Leyen, “Eighteen years later, paragraphs 43 and 45 of that judgment are still relevant. reader It makes it difficult to read.” Italy insisted that the right agreement had been reached. In paragraphs 43 and 45 of the judgment, the 13 Grand Justices noted that the Commission’s testimony did not contain any information from the Commission. reader We appealed this and declined to impose the requested daily fine.
This paragraph highlights the serious injustice that complainants may suffer as a result of confidentiality requirements in infringement proceedings. Has the committee received confirmation from the committee? readerWe could easily refute Italy’s claim that the right agreement had been reached. However, confidentiality requirements prevented the Commission from disclosing Italy’s evidence to us. In my letter to President von der Leyen, I emphasized the following lessons: “Tragically, the procedural rules in infringement cases took precedence over the justice those same proceedings were supposed to deliver.”
The fact that the Commission went on to initiate further infringement proceedings against Italy is evidence that it recognizes that the right settlement for Italy has been reached. reader It has never been made under EU law. However, this could easily have been proven in Case C-119/04 had the Commission been consulted on that point. reader And I included their counter-evidence in my testimony. If daily fines had been imposed in 2006, discrimination would soon have disappeared.
Following the Case C-119/04 decision, Italy introduced four bills to end discrimination. reader. The content is long, complex, and often inconsistent. The most problematic of these, and one with the most worrying implications for European citizens, is the 2010 Gelmini Law. This is a retrospective law introduced to interpret the Italian testimony in Case C-119/04 “truly” and narrow its scope in the process. For a ruling in favor of Letori. This was a ruling made by a local Italian court immediately after the CJEU ruling. I deal with the Gelmini Law in great detail in my letter to President von der Leyen.
One of the most popular posts on the website of Asso.CEL.L, the association I co-founded, reads: Harry Houdini and the Italian Lettori. This post is probably the most popular to date due to the fact that Italy has demonstrated an almost Houdini-like ability to escape the binding case law of the CJEU. This is disheartening. But the analogy also has a positive side.
EL Doctorow in his novel ragtime Describes Harry Houdini as the last great mother lover in history. So it surprised those who knew Houdini that he did not mourn his beloved mother when she died. There was a reason. Houdini, with supreme confidence in his great talent and the ability to escape physical and spatial constraints, thought he could reach his mother across the line dividing this world from the next.
Like Houdini in the process readerI became an activist. And a very successful one too! He testified before the U.S. Congress and was influential in passing legislation curtailing the activities of fortune tellers, psychics, and spiritualists. He enlisted their help in his attempts to reach his mother, but in vain. Then he discovered it was a scam and wanted to expose it as a scam.
Here are some of the stories we’ve heard trying to find courage and the spirit to continue. As I mentioned in the conclusion of my letter, President von der Leyen is the ultimate guardian of the Treaty. We hope that in this role she will be able to intervene to ensure that justice is finally served. reader example.
