Viking and Laval: An Italian Perspective

Abstract

The decisions of the Court of Justice in Viking, Laval and their progenies have been harshly criticised by scholars and other international institutions, but above all, they have been received as a hard blow by trade unions and social actors. Indeed, the Court has been accused of supporting (or even encouraging) social dumping, by increasing the already uneven power of economic actors at the expense of the workers and of their longstanding protectors, the trade unions. While these decisions sparked extensive doctrinal debate, legislative action, even radical changes to the constitutional architecture in some countries, they seem to have gone completely unnoticed in Italy. This is rather surprising, given the fact that workers' protection and the activity of trade unions are at the very core of the Italian Republic. This paper aims first to bring into full light the blatant incompatibility of the dictum of the Court of Justice in the abovementioned decisions with different cornerstones of the Italian legal and social system. Second, it seeks to provide some possible reasons why, in Italy, the potentially devastating effects of the Viking quartet have still to be seen, also considering the opinion of the main Italian trade unions.