I divieti e le restrizioni alla somministrazione di lavoro: riesame o superamento?

With ILO Convention no. 181 of 1997 - and its recommendation - before, and with the EU Directive no. 2008/104/EC, after, important changes were made to the regulation of agency work. Both of these interventions have had the merit to accompany Member States in the process of revision of the limitations related to agency work in order to verify their actual need of subsistence, as well as to regulate an important tool for flexibility. On the basis of information contained in the EU directive each Country should review existing restrictions on agency work in order to maintain in existence only those bans and those restrictions that are justified by specific reasons of general interest. The limits can be of two types: the first ones inherent to restrictions on market entry and the second ones to conditions and restrictions on the use of agency work. While the first type of restriction is realized in systems of licenses and authorizations generally issued by State Authorities; the second one refers to a series of limitations that prevent the use of agency work and that are connected to specific elements such as the existence of detailed grounds of conditions, presence of the user company in a particular industrial sector, etc. By December 5, 2011, EU Member States informed the EU Commission of the results of the review on temporary agency work bans. At present, the main issue is to determine whether the purpose of each EU Member States’ legislator has been to undertake a simple re-examination on the limitations to the use of temporary agency work, or whether it has been a genuine attempt to overcome the obstacles attached to agency work, in order to achieve a proper deregulation of the institute.