La portabilità delle tutele previdenziali: il caso dei ricercatori

The aim of this research is to analyse the welfare model called “welfare della persona”, a welfare model focused on the person. The reasearch is an attempt to demonstrate how in the transitional labor markets, social security protections can be efficiently guaranteed at the condition that they are founded on the professional status of worker, rather than on his contractual status. Faced with increasingly fragmented and mobile professional paths, the new paradigm of protection of the person shall move from the legal qualification of the employment contract to the professional status of the person. In order to verify the convenience of this hypothesis, the research focuses on the portability of social security protections, as it ensures the worker the acquisition and maintenance of his social security rights during his working life, regardless of the diversity of employment contracts and of national security systems. The research’s method adopted is the comparison with the professional category of researchers, because it is symptomatic of a fragmented and mobile professional path. In fact, researchers have an intersectoral and international career. They move from one state to another in order to increase their knowledge and skills. The professional career of a researcher also develops through a multitude of atypical contracts between the public and private sectors, between the university and enterprises. The geographical and intersectoral mobility of researchers is essential for their professional growth and for labour market growth in terms of employment and productivity. From this point of view, the portability of the social security protections of researchers plays a central role to remove the obstacles to the researchers’ mobility and to encourage them to undertake professional paths, in order to support a competitive, open and transparent research labor market. Positive results for the professional figure of the researcher emerge from the present survey on the portability of social security protections, specially of pension rights. Firstly, the portability of social security protections for researchers is guaranteed by the regulation n. 883/2004/CE on the coordination of the social security systems, that provides for the aggregation of contributory periods for the researchers. The researcher’s contributive position takes into account all the contributory periods accrued in the different member States where research activity has been carried out. Secondly, also in Italy the portability of social security protections of researchers is guaranteed by many forms of aggregation of contributory periods. One of them is the free cumulation, which guarantees the constitution of a unique researcher’s contributive position on top of which are added all the contributory periods accrued in different sector, either public or private. Thirdly, in the context of Horizon 2020 program, the European Commission has adopted a particular professional pan-European pension fund for researchers, the so-called Retirement Saving Vehicle for the European Researchers. Therefore, the results of this study allow to point out that the portability of social security rights directly protects the figure of the researcher, who can count on a stable and lasting insurance coverage, despite his fragmented and discontinuous career. Finally, the welfare model focused on the person demonstrates its feasibility through the portability of pension rights for the case of the researchers. The results of the survey can be extended to other professional categories, which - like researchers - have a mobile professional career. The model of “welfare della persona” can be extended to all the workers, since they have increasingly transitional professional paths.