delayed payment or in installments is unconstitutional – Corriere.it

The deferment of the payment of the severance pay, or of the severance pay (Tfs) to civil servants who cease their employment for having reached the age limit is incompatible with the Constitution and its principle of fair remuneration. This was established by the Consulta – consulted by the Confsal-Unsa union – with sentence 130 filed on Friday 23 June 2023. So far, in fact, state employees receive the Tfs on average two years after retiring in annual tranches of 50 thousand euros. In the worst cases it even reaches seven years.

The right pay

The Constitutional Court, with the sentence on the subject, definitively changes the cards on the table. The constitutional principle of just pay, of which these services constitute a component, becomes substantial not only in the amount paid to the employee, but also in the timeliness of disbursement. The severance pay or service a part of the employee’s salary that is punctually set aside to beAnd disbursed in full upon termination of the professional relationship, aimed at meeting the specific needs of the employee. According to the Constitutional Court, the legislator must therefore have regard to the significant financial impact that overcoming the deferral entails, identify the means and methods for implementing a reform that also takes into account the commitments undertaken in the context of the previous economic-financial planning.

Article 36 of the Constitution

The ruling (of which judge Maria Rosaria San Giorgio drafted) declares the questions of constitutional legitimacy of art. 3, paragraph 2, of the decree law n. 79 of 1997 and of the art. 12, paragraph 7, of Legislative Decree no. 78 of 2010 which respectively provide for the deferral and installment of services. The Lazio Administrative Court raised the case, referring to Article 36 of the Constitution. However, the Court clarified that the discretion of the legislator is not temporally unlimited. And the excessive continuation of legislative inertia would not be tolerable, also taking into account that the Court had already addressed the legislator, with sentence no. 159 of 2019, a warning signaling the problematic nature of the legislation in question.

State spending

The Court then noted that the regulation of the installment payment of end-of-service allowances provides for adjustments in favor of the beneficiaries of the lower benefits. In any case, the Court concludes, this legislation – which was connected to contingent needs for the consolidation of public finances – as combined with the deferral of the service, ends up aggravating the identified vulnerability. For the State and also for INPS, this novelty risks becoming a problem. Parliament, at the address of the Meloni government, will have to remove the current deferment e adopt new rules, even gradually as envisaged by the Court itself. But the retirement of about 150,000 public employees is expected only for next year, for which an average of 70,000 euros each is calculated in severance pay. For the State, it would translate into an expenditure of no less than 10.5 billion euros.