Rome Letter/Paddy Agnew: On Wednesday the European Commission took the unusual step of asking the Court of Justice to impose a €309,750 "daily" fine on Italy. Sounds like a lot of money, but isn't this boring nonetheless, you ask?
Intriguingly, though, the fine has been imposed not for a failure to observe either milk quotas or the Stability Pact but because of what the European Court of Justice deems to be the "discriminatory" treatment of foreign-language lecturers in Italian universities.
Wednesday's ruling was in fact the latest chapter in a 17-year legal battle by the lecturers (lettori) for what they claim to be equal employment rights under Article 39 of the EU treaty.
Although the story of their battle is long and legalistic, it is still worth the telling if only for the light it shines on the Italian university system.
There are currently about 1,500 foreign lecturers working in Italian universities. Nearly all of them work as native-speaker language teachers, performing a crucial function on the ever-more globalized, academic shop floor. Hours and rates of pay vary from university to university, but a national average would see the foreign lecturer do approximately 400 hours per annum for €700-€1,000 per month. Big earners they ain't.
In the context of an Italian university system all too infamous for its blend of chronic underfunding, inadequate facilities, excessive student numbers (about 180,000 are enrolled at Rome's La Sapienza university) and Byzantine exam systems, the very presence of the language teachers often provides the hapless Italian student with a useful reference point.
Remember, this is an academic world dominated by well-paid professor "barons" who treat their positions as feudal fiefdoms in which researchers are not so much employed as indentured. (By the way, a recent survey by Shanghai University reported that only one Italian university, La Sapienza, figures in the top 100 worldwide based on the quality of its research work).
The problem about foreign lecturers, however, is, was and will continue to be their status.
Are they, as they claim, entitled to be treated as lecturers earning equivalent pay to Italian associate professors, as under the terms of their original employment?
Or are their rates of pay, as determined by a pre-Christmas government decree, to be linked to those on the lowest teaching grade in Italian universities, namely researchers who on average do less than half the hours of the foreign lecturers?
These arguments have been around since 1989 when, in a landmark judgement, the European Court of Justice ruled that it was illegal for Italian universities to deny the foreign lecturer tenure of contract.
In response to both that 1989 ruling and a subsequent 1993 judgement, Italy in 1995 introduced legislation converting the temporary foreign lecturer contracts into permanent ones.
That was the good news, but there was a sting in the tail since that same legislation changed the lecturer's status from that of "lettori" to "collaborator and linguistic expert", i. e. without didactic status.
Prompted by a tiny but highly-motivated lobby of Italy-based foreign lecturers, including Irishman Henry Rodgers at La Sapienza and helped along the way by Irish MEP Proinsias De Rossa, the legal battle continued.
A June 2001 Court of Justice judgement found that Italy's discriminatory treatment of foreign lecturers violated Article 39. This prompted the European Commission to open so-called Article 228 "enforcement proceedings" against Italy for discrimination, involving a daily fine of €250,000.
By way of response, Italy on January 14th ratified a government decree which aligned the status of the "lettori" with the national category of "ricercatori a tempo definito" (part-time researchers).
In other words, Italy moved the goalposts by using the lowest teaching grade as a parameter for foreign lecturers' salaries.
The upshot of that was that the referee back in Brussels this week blew the whistle, showing Italy a yellow card worth €309,705.
While this legal wrangle might seem complicated, the underlying principles are not.
The argument is about the apparent willingness of the over-privileged Italian academic class to protect its hardly over-productive, closed shop.
Even the fact that courts in Pisa, Rome, Siena and Udine among others have already ruled in favour of the foreign lecturers does not seem to impact.
In the end, you could say Italian academics are slow learners.