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Teachers of Catholic religious education: the requirement to hold a suitability certificate issued by a Church authority does not justify the renewal of fixed-term contracts. There is no discrimination on grounds of religion or based on the fixed-term nature of the employment relationship.

YT and 17 other persons (together, ‘the applicants’), who have been Catholic religious education teachers in public establishments for many years, were recruited by the Ministero dell’Istruzione dell’Università e della Ricerca – MIUR (Ministry of Education, Universities and Research, Italy) under successive fixed-term contracts. Having observed that they were not eligible for the tenure provided for under Italian law concerning teaching staff, on account of the fact that their contracts lasted one year, which precluded their inclusion on the permanent ranking lists, the applicants brought an action before the referring court, seeking primarily to obtain the transformation of their current contracts into contracts of indefinite duration.

The referring court, observing that the Italian legislation transposing the framework agreement on fixed-term work 1 excludes the transformation of successive fixed-term contracts into contracts of indefinite duration in the teaching sector, takes the view that the action cannot be upheld. According to that court, having regard to that exclusion and to the fact that the Catholic religious education teachers in question were not eligible for the tenure provided for under Italian law, that law does not provide for any measure to prevent abuse arising from the use of successive fixedterm contracts for those teachers, within the meaning of Clause 5 of the framework agreement.