Court of Cassation (sentence no. 23933/2010) and Ministry of Labor (note no. 1, February 2, 2011) clarified some terms and conditions of secondment, regulated by Article 30, Legislative Decree no. 276/2003.
In particular, according to the Court, temporariness does not coincide with shortness: the lawfulness of the employee’s secondment to perform his/her activity in the interest of a third party does not depend on the duration of the secondment itself but on the fact that the employer’s interest in the employee’s performance for the third party occurs for the whole duration. Temporariness, in fact, has to be referred to the employer’s interest into the concrete performance of the activity and not in the unlawful staff leasing.
The note of the Ministry of Labor has specified that, in order to evaluate the secondment lawfulness, the place where the employee is seconded has not necessarily to coincide with the premises of the receiving company. Granted that the requirements for the secondment occur (also within a company group) the employer can second the employee also to places different from the premises of the receiving company and also in more than one place (e.g. transport activity that requires travels).
