Which social security regime for platform workers in Italy?

In the case Oliari and Others versus Italy (Appl. No. 18766/2011, judgment of 21.7.2015), the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) held that Italy by banning same-sex and any other form of civil union for homosexual couples was violating Art. 8 of the European Convention of Human Rights (ECHR), the right to respect privacy and family life. The ECtHR examined the complaint of three same-sex couples regarding their inability to acknowledge their relationships under Italian law, thus coming to the conclusion that Italy has violated the European Convention of Human Rights by not taking into account the recent trends in the ECtHR case law (Vallianatos versus Greece, Appl. No. 29381/09 and 32684/09, judgment of 7.11.2013) and in the Council of Europe where nowadays 24 state members recognise same-sex civil unions. The ECtHR underlined that by omitting to legally acknowledge same-sex unions, Italian law not only failed to provide for the core needs of homosexual couples but also failed to adapt to the relevant Italian Corte Costituzionale case law that repeatedly called for their protection and recognition.

In this paper, we aimed to assess the main characteristics of a growing form of precarious employment, namely the platform work. These digitally enabled services cover a wide range of activities from personal low or semi-skilled services (e.g. personal transportation) to highly skilled online services such as software development. In our paper, we aimed to characterize the digital platform labor force by their content of the job, working conditions, employment status, and the collective voice. The primary aim of the analysis was to give an overview of theoretical foundations and empirical evidence for an EU supported project on platform workers. Here we presented an overview of the variety of terminology, definitions of platform work, and platform workers and examine the grey zone of labor law regulation in which many of them operate. We assessed the size of platform employment in Europe, indicating the knowledge inequalities within the EU countries and some methodological inconsistencies. As a case study to scrutinize the regulatory challenges accompanying diffusion of platform work, we looked at the failed story of Uber in Hungary and by subsequent success of Bolt which took over the market share of the former. Our findings showed that while the size of the platform economy is growing in Europe, there is no consensus in the social scientific community either on the appropriate terminology or the most convenient methodology on how to measure its extent. This emerging form of employment represents a significant challenge not only for labor law jurisdictions but to the softer forms of social regulation as well. To better understand the proper governance of digital labor markets and the issue of ”collective voice” through the transformation of the content of work, working conditions, and employment status of the Platform Work sector, will be necessary to focus on both the transformation of work/labor as well as its interplay with value creation, governance, management and labor in the platform-based economy.

This article examines the complex and innovative personal scope of the EU Platform Work Directive 2024/2831, highlighting its dual framing around the concepts of ‘platform workers’ and the broader category of ‘persons performing platform work’. The authors explore how the Directive partially departs from traditional binary distinctions between employees and self-employed persons by introducing a more nuanced regulatory approach anchored in both labour law and data protection law. The article analyses the scope of key provisions of the Directive, showing how it confers many protections beyond the confines of the employment relationship. It critically evaluates the potential interpretive tensions between Articles 4 and 5 and underscores the Directive's expansive redefinition of platform work. In doing so, the article positions the Directive as a paradigm shift in EU social regulation – one that embraces a universalistic vision of labour rights grounded in the reality of personal work rather than contractual form and employment status. The authors also reflect on the implications for future EU regulation and international standard-setting processes, particularly those led by the ILO.

People who live with pets (companion animals) in many cases see their pets as family members. Yet, in the eyes of the law, pets are still considered personal property. This is relevant to pet custody matters that may arise at the time of divorce or separation; pets fall within divorce financial proceedings. However, they have the unique nature of living and sentient property, which has interests. In this perspective, the best interest of the nonhuman animal should always be taken into account. Nonetheless, the law lacks definitive standards, and the ways in which courts construe contractual disputes involving nonhuman animals that relate to custody disputes in marital or other relationships do not always take into consideration the unique nature of this living and sentient property. This article provides an examination of the current Italian legal system and of Italian case law related to this matter.

Platform work is a type of work using an online platform to intermediate between platform workers, who provide services, and paying clients. Platform work seems to be growing in size and importance. This study explores platform work in the EU28, Norway and Iceland, with a focus on the challenges it presents to working conditions and social protection, and how countries have responded through top-down (e.g. legislation and case law) and bottom-up actions (e.g. collective agreements, actions by platform workers or platforms). This national mapping is accompanied by a comparative assessment of selected EU legal instruments, mostly in the social area. Each instrument is assessed for personal and material scope to determine how it might impact such challenges. Four broad legal domains with relevance to platform work challenges are examined in stand-alone reflection papers. Together, the national mapping and legal analysis support a gap analysis, which aims to indicate where further action on platform work would be useful, and what form such action might take.

Many studies have highlighted a substantial "bureaucracy domination" in procedures relating to migrants’ access to territory. This form of domination is marked by highly discretionary and arbitrary practices, enacted by the administrative authorities of the state. Only minor attention, however, has been devoted to the arbitrariness of judicial decisions and to the judicial role in general in the numerous proceedings that increasingly affect the path of migrants. This path is the main object of this paper. The study focuses on Italian case law in expulsion and detention proceedings of irregular third country national citizens and asylum seekers and presents qualitative empirical research on decisions issued by the competent national authorities. The results have been analysed using a selection of theoretical tools, all referable to the general concept of the rule of law. The judicial decisions on pre-removal detention proceedings in two case studies are examined: the jurisprudence on detention of irregular migrants, in different offices of the Justice of the Peace in Italy; and the case law on detention of asylum seekers in the Ordinary Tribunal of Rome. The assumption underlying the research is that various conceptions of the rule of law may have different explanatory power when it comes to explaining the empirical results. To verify this hypothesis, the study proposes an overview of the main rule of law doctrines in the Western tradition of political and legal thought and applies the method of historical-conceptual analysis. As a result, the explanatory power of six theoretical models of the rule of law was verified against the data with the view to highlight the virtues and vices of the respective explanatory frameworks. This article reaches a two-fold conclusion. First, as far as the explanatory frameworks are concerned: the results of the two case studies cannot be fully explained by any of the models considered in this study. This fact alone casts doubts on the explanatory power of these theories and calls for further research on judicial decision-making more generally. Secondly, a key finding of the study regarding the notions of discretion and arbitrariness is that the judicial approach which assures the highest protection of rights is also the one that is most easily influenced by arbitrariness. The author argues that this paradox can be easily dissolved by paying attention to the plural dimensions of arbitrariness. If we consider arbitrariness from a legal point of view, i.e. as an illegal decision, it is unsurprising that the authority that most uses its discretionary powers is also the one most at risk of abusing these discretionary powers and hence of exercising arbitrary power. However, if we consider arbitrariness from the point of view of philosophical-political theory, i.e. as a form of domination characterised by the absence of sufficient justification, it is unsurprising that the judicial approach which assures the highest protection of rights is also the one that takes its own role as guarantor of these rights and of the constitutional democratic legal order as such most seriously. This judicial approach thus most often risks exercising its power in criticisable ways, as compared to an authority much more in line with the requirements of law enforcement agencies. Keywords: migration, discretion, justice, arbitrariness, civil rights, Rechtsstaat, expulsion, mixed constitution

One of the fields where the clash between the ambition toward secularism and the need to enhance cultural traditions mostly emerges is the debate on the presence of religions in the pluralist public space. From a Constitutional point of view, Courts and judges are often asked to solve conflicts involving religious claims, trying to maintain simultaneously respect for religious identities, religious freedom and the principle of equality of every belief before the state. The difficulty of this task arises clearly within the extensive case law on religious symbols and ceremonial prayers in Europe, but also in the USA. In order to address this challenge, constitutional judges often try to extract from a certain definition of “secular state” a particular legal standard and use it as the legal tool useful to reconcile, once and for all, all the cases concerning religions in public spaces. In a nutshell, neutrality as a legal standard implies two main goals: strict and strong separation between state and church; and freedom from religion (instead of freedom of religions). This idea of neutrality has received many criticisms: as some political thinkers pointed out, neutrality is incoherent because any determinate politics must necessarily rely upon and promote some contestable scheme of values. Another legal standard is often used by judges: the so-called “historical argument”. It comes from a different conception of the secular state, and it is raised up in opposition to a strong idea of assertive secularism and strict neutrality. According to this argument, judges must take into account the cultural and religious traditions of their systems as far as they are strongly rooted in the institutional (or even constitutional) history of their Nations. The historical argument has the merit of reconciling the secular state with its cultural heritage. Nonetheless, the use of the historical argument alone is both weak and formalistic: above all, practical jurists cannot solve hard conflicts just resorting to “what has always been done”. After having shown why the two legal standards mostly used by courts are not convincing enough, our chapter points to a third way to realize the ambition toward a secular state, on the one hand, and to enhance religious traditions according to their true meanings, on the other. This third solution is based on three main premises: (a) the idea of finding a unique abstract legal standard, capable of resolving every case, is a utopia; (b) the place of religion in the public space does not involve a binary relation (state vs. church), but rather it is a complex triangular relational principle (that involves state, religion, and civil society); (c) the goal of the courts is not to enforce a certain idea of the secular state or laicita, but to facilitate pluralism and religious peace. In the final part of the chapter we try to verify, within the most recent Italian case law on religious rituals in State schools (i.e. pastoral visitations and bishops’ benedictions), whether and when this third approach—which considers laicita a tool, not a goal—has succeeded.

Platform work is a form of employment that uses an online platform to match the supply of and demand for paid labour. In Europe, platform work is still small in scale but is rapidly developing. The types of work offered through platforms are ever-increasing, as are the challenges for existing regulatory frameworks. This report explores the working and employment conditions of three of the most common types of platform work in Europe. For each of these types, Eurofound assesses the physical and social environment, autonomy, employment status and access to social protection, and earnings and taxation based on interviews with platform workers. A comparative analysis of the regulatory frameworks applying to platform work in 18 EU Member States accompanies this review. This looks into workers? employment status, the formal relationships between clients, workers and platforms, and the organisation and representation of workers and platforms.

This study examines the multifaceted experiences of gig workers in India's quick commerce platform-based delivery industry, exploring both empowering opportunities and exploitative challenges. Using thematic analysis of narratives from platform workers (N = 15), the research identifies fifteen distinct themes that capture the complex reality of gig work. Ten themes illuminate challenging aspects, including psychological normalization, skill devaluation, aspirational entrapment, invisible labor extraction, algorithmic subjectification, economic gaslighting, spatial vulnerability, perpetual provisional status, emotional labor extraction, and future potential manipulation. Five additional themes highlight positive dimensions of gig work experiences. Findings reveal how perceptions of independence and flexibility, algorithmic oversight systems, and cultural narratives about "hustle" fundamentally shape workers' understanding of their employment conditions. Results demonstrate that while economic instability significantly impacts workers' willingness to tolerate adverse conditions, platform design also creates spaces for agency and empowerment. This research contributes to understanding how gig workers navigate a complex landscape of opportunities and constraints, providing insights into the multifaceted nature of platform-based work. The study's balanced approach acknowledges both the vulnerabilities and strengths within contemporary gig economy models, recognizing workers as active negotiators of their circumstances rather than simply passive victims or uncritical beneficiaries of platform economies.

Introduction: Since February 2020, the outbreak of COVID-19 spread to several countries worldwide, including Italy. In this study, we aimed to assess the psychopathological impact of the pandemic across the general population of Lombardy, the most affected Italian region, and to compare the prevalence of psychiatric symptoms between the general public and healthcare workers.Methods: Four hundred and thirty-two participants completed an online survey including: the Depression, Anxiety and Stress Scale−21 items (DASS-21), the Impact of Event Scale—Revised (IES-R) and the Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index (PQSI). Healthcare workers were also asked to complete the Maslach Burnout Inventory (MBI).Results: At the DASS-21, 33.3% of the responders presented pathological levels of stress, 25.5% of anxiety, and 35.9% of depression. At the IES-R, 13.9% appeared at risk of developing Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). At the PSQI, 57.6% presented sleep disturbances. Female gender and younger age predicted higher scores of distress. Healthcare workers presented higher levels of psychiatric symptoms than the general public. Moreover, working in contact with COVID-19 patients predicted higher scores at the IES-R subscale Intrusion.Conclusion: Our results showed that about a third of our sample presented symptoms of stress, anxiety, and depression during the first month of the COVID-19 pandemic outbreak in Lombardy; more than half of the responders presented sleep disturbances, and 13% appeared at risk of PTSD. Italian authorities should develop specific strategies to guarantee psychological support to the population of Lombardy, with particular attention to women, young people, and healthcare workers exposed to COVID-19 patients.

This paper takes as its starting point the European Court of Justice (ECJ) case law dealing with the concept of ‘worker’ for the purposes of Article 39 of the EC Treaty (free movement of persons). In particular, the leading case, Lawrie-Blum v. Land Baden-Württemberg, provides the classic definition of worker, based on the criterion of the ‘performance of services for and under the direction of another person’, in short ‘subordination’, a concept that appears to have no parallel in English labour and employment law. It is argued that a general, standard EU-law notion of employed persons or workers, based on the concept of subordination, is lacking. The paper examines the connections between para-subordinate workers in Italy and employee-like persons in Germany (Arbeitnehmerähnliche Personen), with comparable workers in the UK, para-subordinate workers in France, Portugal and Spain and dependent contractors in Sweden, in support of the view that everywhere in Europe there is a sort of middle category. In the UK it is a statutory category including both employees and certain self-employed workers, whereas in Germany, Italy and France the middle category consists of self-employed workers and replaces personal subordination with a test based on the economic dependence of the worker on the enterprise. To conclude, the author puts forward the view that Lawrie-Blum is an insufficient basis for the notions used in EU-law dealing with self-employed persons, contracts of employment and salaried workers.

This paper adopts a feminist and intersectional perspective to investigate platform-mediated domestic work in Italy. While existing scholarship has extensively analysed classed, gendered and racialized hierarchies in traditional domestic labour, the growing role of digital platforms in mediating these work arrangements deserves further theoretical and empirical attention. Focusing on the experiences of migrant cleaning workers in Milan, this study contributes to the debate on domestic platform work by interrogating the relationship between (de)professionalization and (in)visibility. First, we show how digital labour platforms, while claiming to enhance visibility and professionalization, often reproduce existing intersectional inequalities through mechanisms of legal stratified access to platform work, gendered, racialized and classed division of labour, as well as social invisibility. Second, we challenge the victimization narrative of workers, highlighting not only the lived forms of oppression but also the individual and collective agency actively exercised by platform domestic workers. By adopting an intersectional approach, we then critically challenge the dominant narratives of professionalization and increased visibility related to platform work, illuminating the complex entanglements of oppression and agency in contemporary digital economies.

Consequence analysis in LPG installation using an integrated computer package

The paper analyses both EU and Italian legislation concerning remote participation in shareholders’ meetings of public limited companies . The principal European measure in this field is the Shareholders’ Rights Directive (2007/36/EC), which, under Article 8, provides for electronic voting and remote participation in the shareholders’ meeting. However, the Directive applies exclusively to listed companies . The relevant provision under Italian law is Article 2370, paragraph 4, of the Civil Code, which has been amended also in light of the transposition of the aforementioned Directive. Italian law requires that such electronic means may be used only if expressly permitted by the articles of association , whereas the Directive leaves Member States free to avoid imposing such a condition. It should be noted that Italian legislation still includes provisions adopted during the Covid-19 pandemic, aimed at facilitating the use of technological tools in shareholders’ meetings. This paper therefore compares such emergency legislation with the corresponding provisions of the Civil Code, with a view to identifying potential efficiency gains in corporation’s life.

SOMMARIO: 1. Riforma del Terzo settore e servizio della carità nella Chiesa - 2. La riforma del Terzo settore e le nuove sfide per gli enti ecclesiastici - 3. Il Motu proprio “Intima Ecclesiae natura” e l’evoluzione dell’ordinamento canonico - 4. Il Codice del Terzo settore e la sua applicazione agli enti ecclesiastici - 5. Implicazioni per gli enti della Chiesa: l’esigenza di trasparenza - 6. Il principio della trasparenza nella dottrina canonistica - 7. Il “patrimonio destinato”: implicazioni nell’ordinamento canonico - 8. Attività diverse e controlli canonici: la sfida della governance e della gestione in un contesto concordatario - 9. Osservazioni conclusive. Catholic Church entities and the reform of the Third sector in Italian legislation. Canonical implications ABSTRACT: This paper deals with the canonical implications of Italy’s recent Third sector reform in Italian legislation (d. lgs n. 117/2017) for Catholic Church entities and/or agencies for charitable purposes. It starts with some preliminary remarks on the recent evolution of Canon Law concerning the discipline of charitable organizations and agencies that followed the Motu proprio Intima Ecclesiae natura, issued by Pope Benedict XVI in December 2012. It then examines the general framework of the new regulation of non profit organizations in Italian law, emphasizing the pros and cons (opportunities and risks) of its application to religious entities, particularly those connected to the Catholic Church, which in Italy traditionally enjoy a special discipline safeguarding their canonical structure and purposes. The paper then focuses on the impact of the new civil regulation that allows a wide range of charitable initiatives on behalf of religious organizations, on the governance of Catholic Church entities, which are submitted to the directives and authorizations of ecclesiastical authorities. Finally, it draws some conclusive remarks on the need to update and reform some administrative rules and praxis concerning the administration and finance of charitable institutions in Canon Law.