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Brussels/Rome (ANSA) – The European Commission refers Italy to the EU Court of Justice for failing to end the excessive use of fixed-term contracts and discriminatory working conditions in schools. Italy, says the Commission, « has not adopted the necessary rules to prohibit discrimination regarding working conditions and the abusive use of successive fixed-term contracts ».
Further, the legislation on the salary of fixed-term teachers in public schools, which « does not provide for salary progression based on previous periods of service, » constitutes « discrimination compared to teachers employed on a permanent basis ». The Commission believes that « the efforts of the authorities have been, so far, insufficient ».
The Minister of Education Giuseppe Valditara responds that he has long submitted to the Commission the need to review the Italian teachers’ recruitment system « overcoming the rigidities of the PNRR reform that create an objective discrimination against precarious teachers and do not take into account the numbers of precariousness that have increased in recent years. We confidently expect that the equalization of rights can now also be extended to recruitment forms ».
The number of teachers with fixed-term contracts has exploded in recent years. There were 100 thousand in 2015-16, 135 thousand in 2017-18, 212 thousand in 2020-21, up to 235 thousand in 2022-23, according to Tuttoscuola data. This year, unions estimate 250 thousand precarious, but for the Ministry of Education, they are 160 thousand. The phenomenon is not homogeneous across the territory: with a national precariousness rate of 25%, in Milan, it reaches 37%, in Lodi 43%. The incidence is lower in the south: in Naples 20%, in Agrigento 10% (October 3).
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