A decisive ruling for teachers qualified in Spain

We are pleased to announce that the Lazio Regional Administrative Court (TAR), with its recent ruling dated October 31, 2023, has definitively upheld the collective appeal filed by the law firm Naso & Partners, concerning the contested Note MIUR 2971 of March 17, 2017.

The MIUR note on teachers qualified in Spain

The MIUR's error had a significant impact on teachers qualified in Spain. In practice, with that ministerial note, the then MIUR (currently the Ministry of Education and Merit) changed the rules, making it necessary to pass a public competition or be registered in the extraordinary lists of substitute teachers of the Spanish autonomous communities in order to obtain recognition of the qualification obtained in Spain. This incorrect interpretation by MIUR led to an unfair blockage of recognition requests for all teachers qualified in Spain.

In 2017, lawyers Domenico Naso and Valerio Lancia undertook a collective legal action at the Lazio TAR to challenge this ministerial note. The challenge was based on the clear illegitimacy of the note, as it was the result of a misinterpretation of Spanish regulations and of the communication sent by the Spanish Ministry to the Italian MIUR.

The decisive ruling for teachers qualified in Spain

With the recent ruling no. 16220 of 31.10.2023 the Lazio TAR fully upheld the argument put forward by the law firm Naso & Partners with the following reasoning: “the challenged provision, in introducing strict requirements to which the admissibility of recognition applications is subordinated (“will not be taken into consideration”), appears to go in the opposite direction to the aforementioned jurisprudential guidelines, most recently expressed in the cited Plenary Assemblies, preventing any comparison between professionalizing paths, even in the presence of teaching qualifications issued by the Spanish Ministry (the so-called Acreditacion) which certify suitability to teach in private centers and to participate in public competitions (and even to teach on a fixed-term basis in public schools, if registered in special lists).

The note from the Spanish Ministry and the attached Acreditacion are therefore clear in indicating that, in the Spanish system, passing the selection procedures is not aimed at qualifying the aspiring teacher for the teaching profession, but at allowing recruitment in public schools, that is, the concrete assignment of the position as a career civil servant of the teaching staff or as a fixed-term substitute teacher, on the assumption that the qualification is already held by the aspiring teacher (“Applicants who have passed the selective system for access to the public function are appointed career civil servants of the corresponding non-university teaching staff. These applicants will obtain employment as career teacher civil servants, with a permanent and fixed position.”; see the note from the Spanish Ministry above).

Recognition of the qualification obtained in Spain

Consequently, the Lazio TAR also specified that “in the presence of a certificate, issued following a training course in the country of origin, the duty arises to evaluate the recognition application, without the mere participation in recruitment procedures in public schools being relevant in this regard, a phase that does not pertain to the aforementioned training aspect (see Cons. St., A.P., no. 19/2022, cited).

This is moreover in line with the principles of Article 53 TFEU, as well as with the recognition system outlined by Articles 4, 12 and 13 of Directive 2005/36/EC, according to which the verification incumbent on the Member State concerns the correspondence between the skills certified by a given qualification obtained abroad and the knowledge actually required by national law for the exercise of a given profession, that is, the assessment of “comparability” between activities, as required by Article 4 of Directive 2005/36/EC (CJEU, Vlassopoulou, May 7, 1991, case C-340/89, §§ 15-19).

Conclusions

Lawyers Domenico Naso and Valerio Lancia believe that the recent ruling of the Lazio TAR is of extraordinary importance. This decision represents the culmination of a long and challenging legal battle conducted over several years by the law firm Naso & Partners, which has fought tirelessly to defend the rights of teachers qualified in Spain against an arbitrary and unlawful interpretation of Spanish regulations by the former MIUR.

It is essential to emphasize that, in the event that the ruling is not implemented, the law firm Naso & Partners will take further legal action to protect all teachers who have already obtained a recognition decree with a resolutory clause. Many of them have already been hired as teachers, and the goal is to obtain the removal of this clause, thus allowing full and unconditional recognition in Italy of the teaching qualification obtained in Spain.