According to the Umbria Administrative Court, an employer's failure does not automatically entitle a worker to a permit under the 2020 regularisation scheme

The Regional Administrative Court of Umbria, Perugia, Section I, judgment no. 471 of 14 June 2024, addressed an especially difficult aspect of Italy's extraordinary regularisation of undocumented employment: what happens when an employer's failure prevents completion of the procedure, despite the worker's willingness to regularise their position?

The case

An employer had lodged a regularisation request under Article 103 of Decree-Law No. 34/2020 for a Pakistani worker. The employment relationship subsequently ended when the employer became unavailable. The administration rejected the application because of insufficient employer income, prompting legal proceedings concerning the consequences for the worker.

The constitutional question

The TAR referred questions about the legislation's constitutionality. In judgment no. 209/2023, the Italian Constitutional Court found the questions partly inadmissible and partly unfounded. The central issue was whether the 2020 regularisation framework had to provide the worker with a job-seeking residence permit when rejection was attributable solely to the employer, as a different earlier regularisation scheme had provided under specific conditions.

The TAR's decision

Following the Constitutional Court's ruling, the Umbria Administrative Court rejected the worker's challenge. The official judicial case note explains that different extraordinary regularisation schemes have specific purposes and requirements. A protective clause applicable to the 2012 scheme could not simply be transplanted into the 2020 scheme through analogy.

Why this matters

A worker may be unable to check all the employer's financial requirements before an application is lodged. That practical difficulty does not, by itself, establish an automatic entitlement to a different residence permit under the legislation examined in this case. The legal issue is therefore different from a conventional situation in which a worker with a regular residence status subsequently loses employment.

What should be examined?

• The precise regularisation procedure under which the application was filed.
• The employer's income and the documents supplied at the time.
• Evidence of the employment relationship and its interruption.
• The reasons given by the administration and proof of notification.
• Any independent legal basis for a residence permit, rather than an assumed extension of another regularisation scheme.

The limits of the precedent

This judgment does not establish that an employer's wrongdoing is irrelevant in every immigration case. Nor does it determine whether the worker may have rights under other legal provisions. It addresses the particular architecture of the 2020 regularisation and the constitutional challenge resolved in 2023. Advice on a current residence application requires separate consideration of later legislative changes and the person's individual circumstances.

The broader lesson is the need to distinguish equitable arguments about an innocent worker's position from the precise entitlements created by an exceptional statutory procedure. In litigation, a comparison with previous regularisation laws must engage with their differences rather than assume identical legal effects.

Judgment discussed: TAR Umbria, Perugia, Section I, 14 June 2024, no. 471, President Ungari, Reporting Judge De Grazia. Official Italian administrative judiciary case note. Constitutional Court, judgment no. 209/2023; Article 103 of Decree-Law No. 34/2020. Analysis based on the official case summary, not an independently reviewed full judgment.

Avv. Fabio Loscerbo
Lawyer admitted to represent clients before the Italian Court of Cassation and higher courts
Registered in the Italian Chamber of Deputies' Register of Interest Representatives in the field of Immigration
Lobbyist registered in the European Union Transparency Register No. 280782895721-36 in the field of Migration and Asylum
ORCID: 0009-0004-7030-0428
Article prepared with the assistance of AI tools, under the author's direction, review and editorial responsibility.