In the very recent ruling No. 11344 of April 30, 2025, the Supreme Court clarified that judicial proceedings introduced under the so-called Fornero Rite before February 28, 2023 continue to be governed, even in the appeal stages, by the provisions dictated by the same rite, although the same was repealed by the so-called Cartabia Reform.
Succession of procedural rules on dismissal appeals and transitional regime
The so-called “Fornero rite” had been introduced by Law No. 92/2012 (Art. 1, paragraphs 47 – 69) to address the need to ensure celerity in the resolution of dismissal disputes.
While the legislator’s intentions were shareable, from the first applications the genetic flaws of that normative translation had become apparent.
In fact, the Fornero rite, applicable only to dismissals governed by Article 18 of the Workers’ Statute, implied that the judicial claim could only concern the legitimacy of the dismissal and issues “based on the same constituent facts.” This led, on the one hand, to interpretive doubts about the claims admissible under this rite and, on the other, to a fractioning of judicial claims related to the employment relationship, resulting in an inevitable proliferation of judicial litigation.
Reflection on the evident ineffectiveness of the Fornero rite, as to the possibility of explaining that prefigured deflative effect, had already led the legislature to its “applicative downsizing” by Legislative Decree No. 23/2015, which excluded its application to dismissals subject to the so-called “growing protections” regime, for all employment relationships established since March 7, 2015.
After all, the so-called. Fornero Rite had never been particularly appreciated by insiders and its repeal had also been proposed by the “Commission for the elaboration of proposals for interventions in the field of civil process and alternative instruments” (established at the Ministry of Justice by Ministerial Decree of March 12 March 2021) and this with the twofold aim of “simplifying and clarifying the regulatory framework of the procedural discipline in the matter of dismissals” and “overcoming the interpretative and applicative difficulties that Article 1, paragraphs 48 ff., of Law No. 92 of June 12, 2012, has caused to emerge since its introduction, with inevitable repercussions for the relationship between employer and employee.”
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