STATUTORY PROVISIONS SHOULD BE ACCESSIBLE AND LEGIBLE TO ANYONE, INCLUDING FOREIGN OPERATORS

Articolo pubblicato nella Newsletter dello Studio Ichino Brugnatelli e Associati.

Prior to 1970, Italian labour law comprised seventy sections of the Civil Code, approximately, and a handful of additional Acts, mostly legible by anyone. Since then, labour law statutory provisions have taken up thousands of pages, getting more and more enigmatic even to specialists, especially over the last fifteen years.  The program for issuing a Simplified Labour Code  is based on:

–  the primary and fundamental need that statutory provisions should be legible by and accessible to anyone, including foreign operators;

– the necessity to underline,  and to some extent re-establish,  that  labour law is a component of  civil law, therefore, once the necessary adjustments have been made on account of the typical features of labour market, labour legislation has to be drafted both in accordance with the principle of autonomy of the parties, intended as an essential  individual right, and with the general  provisions regarding  obligations and contracts, which are laid down in Title IV of the Civil Code immediately before Title V,  regarding labour law;

– the need to revalue the original essential function of our Civil Code, and its consequent conciseness and clarity; with regard to labour law, this means that statutory provisions should serve the purpose of laying down some essential principles and rules, as they used to do before, in tune with the relevant supranational jurisdictions.

If the bill, already approved by the Government in recent days, is approved by the  Chamber of Deputies soon after the second reading debate, this ambitious program will be actually finalized, after having been proposed by means of two bills (No. 1873/2009 and 1006/2013, both sealed by Ichino’s signature) in the last five years. At the beginning of 2015, the whole content of the existing regulations regarding  employment and labour law will finally be replaced by a Simplified Code, comprised of less than sixty concise sections, as distinct as possible:  it will repeal a huge number of overlaying rules governing the same subject, update those provisions that have become obsolete due to technological developments  (change of duties, remote controls, teleworking), and harmonize the need of flexibility, on the side of business organizations,  with that of steady income and career, on the side of workers,  according to the European principle of flexicurity.