The Judges of the Court of Justice of the European Community recently pronounced a sentence that “consolidates the protection of workers” with a view to the correct implementation of the framework accord on fixed-term contract work approved with Directive 1999/70/CE. In particular, according to the European Court, it is essential to “prevent the abuses deriving from the use of a succession of fixed-term labour contracts or relations”. The sentence states that “some strict conditions need to be met”, also in the public sector, including the illegality of the use without “objective reasons” of successive fixed-term labour contracts (the rule being the recourse to contracts with no time-limit) or the provisions of some national laws that do not permit the transformation, however legitimate, “of a succession of fixed-tern contracts into a labour contract with no time-limit”. In further protection of the principle of the EU norm – and hence of the rights of workers – the Court ends its sentence by affirming that “national judges must abstain as far as possible from interpreting the domestic law in a way that would risk compromising (…) the result pursued by Directive 1999/70/CE”.
