For the third time Irish MEP Cynthia Ní Mhurchú presses the Commission for answers on its conduct and closure of the long-running Lettori case.
As a practicing barrister before her election to the European Parliament in 2024, Cynthia Ní Mhurchú would have been familiar with court procedure when witnesses under cross-examination hesitate to or decline to answer pertinent questions.
“Answer the question”, the words of the presiding judge to the reluctant witness, are familiar also to TV audiences with a liking for courtroom drama series. In both the real-life and dramatized settings, the judge’s intervention is taken to mean that the witness is uncomfortable with the question and that information of importance to the just resolution of a case is being withheld.
Legal Background
MEP Cynthia Ní Mhurchú’s pursuit of the European Commission for answers on its conduct and closure of the Lettori case, the longest-running case of discrimination in the history of the EU, has been extensively covered in European Times. In defiance of four clear-cut rulings of the Court of Justice of the European Union(CJEU), the first of which dates back to 1989, Italy has refused to grant the Lettori, non-national university teaching staff, their Treaty rights to parity of treatment with Italian workers.
An unprecedented third infringement case against Italy for its persisting breach of the parity of treatment provision of the Treaty was opened by then Commissioner for Social Rights Nicolas Schmit in September 2021 and referred to the CJEU in July 2023. In May 2023 Italy had introduced legislation to pre-empt referral of the case to the CJEU.
Assessing this legislation in the context of a reply to a parliamentary question, Commissioner Schmit explained that the Commission had decided to refer the case to the Court because the legislation 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. A Census jointly conducted by Lettori union Asso.CEL.L and Italy’s largest trade union FLC CGIL, the results of which were sent to the Commission in March 2025, showed that in the majority of Italian universities the payments due had not been made.
MEP Ní Mhurchú questions
1.Conflict of evidence in the EU’s longest-running discrimination case covers MEP Cynthia Ní Mhurchú’s first question to the Commission. It focuses on a provision of Italy’s law of May 2023 which limits the number of years to which the Lettori are entitled to backdated settlements for withheld parity of treatment. Such a provision is tantamount to a position that the Treaty rights of non-nationals are not open-ended and can be prescribed by domestic legislation. Scrutiny of the Commission’s reply shows that it did not address the point of whether such a prescription is compatible with EU law.
The reply on behalf of the Commission was given by Executive Vice-President Mînzatu on 10.6.2025. A detail in the reply which might have seemed incidental at the time was later to assume a greater importance. This was the information that the infringement case against Italy, Case C-519/23, “is currently pending at the Court of Justice”. Over a month later, and without giving the advance notice representative Lettori unions Asso. CEL.L and FLC CGIL would have expected in accordance with infringement case procedures, the Commission dropped the case on 17.07.2025.
2.Troubling questions on a treaty injustice which will not go away covers Ní Mhurchú’s second and follow-up question to the Commission. The question, a priority question, was co-signed by 12 other MEPs. Ní Mhurchú and the12 co-signatories request an explanation of what happened in the interval between 10.06.2025 and 17.07.2025 to cause the Commission to close the case. Ní Mhurchú also notes the failure of the Commission to answer her question on whether the prescription condition in Italy’s May 2023 legislation is compatible with Community law and asks for an answer on this point again.
In her answer to the priority question Executive Vice-President Mînzatu once more refuses to be drawn on the compatibility of the prescription provision with EU law. As it is settled case law of the CJEU that that “a Member State cannot plead provisions, practices or situations prevailing in its domestic legal order to justify failure to observe obligations arising under Community law”, it follows that the domestic prescription condition would have been ruled contrary to EU law had the case gone to the Court. The Asso.CEL.L -FLC CGIL Census contains instances of Lettori with over 30 years of service whose settlements for the discrimination they had suffered over their careers were limited to 5 years under the prescription condition.
In the context of Treaty justice, the Commission’s explanation of what caused it to withdraw the case from the Court is very concerning. Despite the fact that the Court has on four occasions found Italy guilty of discrimination against the Lettori, despite the fact that Italy misled the Court to avoid fines in the second of the infringement cases and thus induced the Commission to take a third case, the Commission nonetheless gave total credence to its claims in correspondence of October 2024 that it had made the settlements due to Lettori under EU law.
The explanation to Ní Mhurchú and her 12 co-signatories is also misleading. It could be read to mean that the Commission evaluated the Census evidence from the Lettori which refutes Italy’s claims before deciding to close the case. In fact, in a letter to the unions the Commission expressly refused to consider the Census data. Instead, it passed the Lettori evidence to Italy for examination, thus effectively allowing the defendant to rule on the case against it. The Commission’s refusal to consider Lettori evidence of the violation of their Treaty rights is the subject of a pending Asso.CEL.L –FLC CGIL complaint to the European Ombudsman.
3. “Yes” or “No”. Parliamentary question E-005032/2025
Rule 144 of the Rules of Procedure of the European Parliament obliges the Commission to answer questions from MEPs. In practice, as in the case of the Ní Mhurchú Lettori questions, the replies are often evasive, vague, even misleading, causing the MEPs to either write follow-up questions or resign themselves to the Commission’s reluctance to give direct answers.
MEP Ní Mhurchú words her third question to reduce the scope for an incomplete and evasive reply. She asks for a simple “yes” or “no” answer to the question of whether the May 2023 Italian legislation is compatible with EU law. She asks the Commission “to explain why it did not examine the Lettori census data but instead closed case C-519/23 based exclusively on evidence from Italy, the defendant in the case.” It is a style of questioning which the judges of the Court might well have employed in their interrogation of the parties had Case C-519/23 – Commission of the European Communities v Italian Republic not been removed from the Court register.
Implications
In signing the Treaty of Accession to join the EU Member States ceded sovereignty for a supposedly greater good. Much of that good is undone if the Commission, as Guardian of the Treaties, refuses to accept evidence from EU citiz ens of the violation of their Treaty rights. It is further undone if the Commission refuses to answer questions placed on behalf of these citizens by their elected representatives in the European Parliament. The Lettori parity of treatment case raises serious questions about the Commission’s conduct of infringement proceedings for breaches of the Treaties.
In accordance with the Rules of Procedure, the Commission now has 6 weeks to answer Ní Mhurchú’s question. It remains to be seen whether she will be given the answers she has been seeking at the third time of asking.