Commission comes under pressure to account to parliament for its sudden closure of the long-running Lettori case
Irish MEP Cynthia Ní Mhurchu has placed a priority question to the European Commission asking for an explanation of its sudden closure of the Lettori case, the longest-running case of discrimination in the history of the EU. Co-signed by 12 other MEPs, the question is a follow-up to a March 2025 question from MEP Ní Mhurchu on the compatibility with EU law of an Italian law introduced to purportedly end discrimination against Lettori, a question which Commissioner Roxana Mînzatu, the Commissioner responsible for the case, patently failed to address in her reply.
Legal History
The Lettori case has been extensively covered in European Times. The line of litigation predates the present century and dates back to 1987 with the referral of a reference for preliminary ruling case taken by Spanish national Pilar Allué against her employer, Università Degli Studi di Venezia, to the Court of Justice.
Though the Court found for Allué in its 1989 ruling , Italy’s misreading of the ruling caused her to have further recourse to the Court and to return and win a second case in 1993. It was for non-implementation of the Allué case law that the Commission opened the first of its infringement proceedings against Italy, with the Court ruling for the Commission in its 2001 sentence and the case crossing over to the present century
Case C-519/23, for non-implementation of the second infringement ruling of 2006 against Italy, is the case with which the Ní Mhurchu priority question is concerned. It represents an unprecedented third infringement case for the same breach of the parity of treatment provision of the Treaty. The case was referred to the Court of Justice in August 2023.
Then Commissioner Nicholas Schmit, in response to a question placed by 7 Irish members of the last parliament, explained that the Commission had referred the case to the Court because May 2023 legislation introduced by Italy had not “addressed the main grievance of the case, i.e. the payment of the due arrears to the Lettori”. These “due arrears” equate to compensatory settlements for discriminatory working conditions from the date of first employment.
Commissioner Mînzatu’s 10 June 2025 reply to MEP Ní Mhurchu’s first question stated that Case C-519/23 ‘is currently pending at the Court of Justice”. This is consistent with her earlier reply to a priority question from Ciaran Mullooly MEP. It is consistent also with what the Commission wrote in letters on the progress of the infringement case to Lettori union Asso.Cel.L and to the FLC CGIL, Italy’s largest trade union.
Yet on 17 July 2025, without informing the Lettori representatives, without making any public announcement, the Commission abruptly closed the case.
Ní Mhurchu and the 12 co-signatories to her priority question demand an explanation of what happened in the interval between 10.06.2025 and 17.07.2025 to cause the Commission about-face.
Investigation of Commission Decisions
While the Court of Justice sentences and parliamentary questions on the Lettori case can be meticulously referenced as they are in the public domain, investigative journalism into the Commission’s sudden decision to close the case is hindered by the fact that evidence from Italy, the Member State in breach, is protected by the confidentiality requirement of infringement proceedings.
Nevertheless, enough facts have emerged which raise serious questions about the Commission’s conduct of the case. Chief among them is the Commission’s refusal to consider Census evidence from Lettori, evidence that it itself had explicitly requested and its uncritical acceptance of the data from defendant Italy. Troubling also is the refusal of the Commission to answer questions from euro parliamentarians about very pertinent legal aspects of the case.
The sequence of the Commission’s dealings with the Lettori unions and with their representatives in the European Parliament in the months preceding the closure of the case is set out below.
Dealings with Lettori unions
1. The first Census of Discriminatory Conditions in Italian Universities, a Census conducted by Asso.CEL.L, a Lettori association formed at “La Sapienza” University of Rome, and FLC CGIL, Italy’s largest trade union, was influential in persuading the Commission to open its third infringement procedure against Italy. Afterwards, the unions sent regular updates of the Census to the Commission services.
By letter of 06 December 2024, FLC CGIL Secretary-General Gianna Fracassi informed Commissioner Mînzatu that the settlements for reconstruction of career due to Lettori under the C-119/04 ruling of the Court of Justice had not been made in the majority of Italian universities.
2.In its reply of 19 February 2025, the Commission wrote that in October 2024 it had been informed by Italy that “the administrative procedure for the payment of arrears due to all eligible former lettori, insofar as covered by the infringement procedure C-519/23, has been completed.” It invited FLC CGIL to share evidence to the contrary within a deadline of one month “given that the case C-519/23 is pending”.
The comparative advantage afforded to Italy, the defendant in the infringement case, is noteworthy here. By October 2024 Italy was already 18 months beyond the deadline give for compliance with EU law in the Commission’s reasoned opinion. Four months later the Commission passed news of Italy’s letter to the Lettori, giving them a mere month to counter Italy’s evidence.
3.Within the tight time limit imposed, Asso.CEL.L and FLC CGIL conducted a further national Census. Contrary to what had been affirmed by Italy, the results revealed that in 31 of the 39 participating universities no settlements were made with Lettori to compensate for decades of discriminatory treatment. Aggregate university-by-university Census results were communicated to the Commission in March 2025.
4.In a reply of 10 April 2025, Mario Nava, Director-General of Employment and Social Affairs, wrote that, as indicated in its previous letter, the Commission would not examine the Census information but instead would transmit it to the Italian authorities for their observations.
Nowhere, however, in its letter of 19 February did the Commission indicate that it would not examine the evidence it had requested FLC CGIL to provide. This troubling misstatement will be one of the matters addressed in an Asso.CEL.L –FLC CGIL complaint to the European Ombudsman about the Commission’s mismanagement of the infringement proceedings.
5.On this specific point, in her letter of response of 28 April, FLC CGIL Secretary-General Secretary Gianna Fracassi, reminded Director-General Mario Nava that “it was the expectation of the union that the Commission, as Guardian of the Treaty, would examine the results of the census we conducted”.
Secretary-General Fracassi further pointed out that while FLC CGIL had no objections to the Commission forwarding the Census data to Italy, it could not consent to a situation whereby Italy would substitute the Commission as arbiter of Lettori evidence given its long record of non-compliance with the case law of the Court of Justice and its position as the defendant in the infringement case.
6.The last Commission letters to FLC CGIL were sent on 02 June and 15 July respectively. In the 02 June letter the Commission passed on Italy’s criticism of the aggregate university-by-university nature of the Census and its claim that it needed individual returns. Replying on 19 June, FLC CGIL wrote that the aggregate returns were intended as a courtesy and convenience to the Commission and sent the disaggregated individual returns. On 15 July the Commission objected that, as the participants had not consented to the sharing of their information with the Commission, the individual returns could not be forwarded to Italy. How this can be squared with the fact that the participants completed the Census in the full knowledge that it would be sent to the Commission is literally beyond comprehension.
Two days later, on 17 July, the Commission abruptly closed the case denying the Lettori the opportunity to have their Census evidence considered by the Court of Justice and giving credence to the evidence of an intransigent Member State which had manifestly failed to implement 4 clear-cut rulings of the Court.
Dealings with the European Parliament
Eight of the co-signatories to the Cynthia Ní Mhurchu priority question are Irish MEPs. In the present and ninth elected parliament, 3 questions had been placed to the Commission on the Lettori case before her priority question. All of them came from Irish MEPs. This strong support for the Lettori is consistent with the support that Irish MEPs have offered in earlier parliaments.
In order, the 3 questions were placed by Ciaran Mullooly, Michael McNamara, and Cynthia Ní Mhurchu, in the first of her questions. The questions and the Commission replies can be consulted on the web site of the European Parliament. Scrutiny of the replies shows that not only does the Commission not address the important legal points raised, it does not even acknowledge that they have been raised.
An instructive parallel may be drawn between questions placed in the parliaments of the Member States and questions placed to the European Commission. Questions on the Lettori case have been placed and answered in the domestic parliaments. To colleagues accustomed to the full and civil answers given to the questions from their representatives in their home country parliaments, the handling by the Commission of questions from euro parliamentarians comes across as disdainful and even downright rude.
Pending Irish Presidency of the Council of the European Union
In the second half of 2026 Ireland will assume the Presidency of the Council of the EU, with the attendant power to shape the EU agenda. Irish Lettori will use the opportunity this presents to lobby their government to place Commission accountability to the European Parliament and to EU citizens high on their agenda.
It is hardly a revolutionary agenda. Accountability to parliament and to the citizens that parliamentarians represent are the rudiments of the democracies of the Member States. Unfortunately, these rudiments have not carried over into the arrangements for the enforcement of the Union Treaties.
While the College of Commissioners is ultimately responsible to the European Parliament, which in extremis can even vote it out of office, the parliament has no effective power over the Commission Directorates-General, which are effectively the Civil Service of the EU. Just as the Civil Service is answerable to the parliaments of the Member states, so too the Directorate-Generals should be made answerable to the European Parliament.
