ITALIAN NATIONAL REPORTS - Università Degli Studi Di Palermo

Silvana Sciarra and William Chiaromonte
The Prohibition of Age Discrimination in Labour Relations
(Regulation 2204/2002/EC), which includes young people less than 25 years
old or who have completed their full time education less than 2 years
previously and who have not yet obtained a regular job. Furthermore,
included in the concept of “disadvantaged workers” are people older than 50,
without a job or about to lose one. In all these cases the special personal
situation of the worker or other objective factors justify state aid, if in
compliance with the objective conditions provided by the regulations.
It is thus necessary to describe some of these specific cases in order to
assess their compatibility with European law. The Commission has in fact to
assess the compatibility of State aid in the form of wage subsidies pursuant to
art. 6(1) (h) and (i) of the Commission Regulation (EC) n. 800/2008 of 6
August 2008 declaring certain categories of aid compatible with the common
market in application of art. 87 and 88 of the Treaty. In 2009 a
Communication containing the guidelines for the assessment has been
published (Communication from the Commission, Criteria for the compatibility analysis
of state aid to disadvantaged and disabled workers subject to individual notification,
Official Journal C 188 of 11.8.2009, 6).
The flexible forms of employment provided by the Legislative Decree
n. 276 of 2003 and aimed at encouraging the hiring of disadvantaged workers
include the following:
- Access-to-work contracts (art. 54 ff.) are employment schemes with
financial incentives targeted at disadvantaged groups. This type of contract
replaced the old work training contract. It is intended to promote individual
plans for the adaptation of the vocational skills of the worker to a specific
workplace in order to facilitate access or re-entry to the labour market for the
following categories: young people between 18-29 years old; those in longterm
unemployment between the ages of 29 and 32; unemployed persons over
the age of 50; workers who intend to return to employment but have been
unemployed for more than two years; women of all ages resident in a
geographical areas with a low female employment rate and people with a
recognized serious physical, mental or psychological disability. The contract is
non-renewable and may last from six to 18 months (or 36 months in the case
of severe physical, mental or psychological disability). Article 59 provides that
“during the access-to-work relationship, the category to which the worker is
assigned cannot be inferior, by more than two levels, than the category that
the national collective agreement gives to the worker employed in tasks or