Abstract

The essay focuses on the issue of extra-European citizens access to public sector employment in Italy. As the analysis leads to exclude that the employment reservation stems from Constitutional constraints, the author highlights how, despite the presence of rules preventing foreigners from gaining access to public sector employment, there might be in our legal system a general principle of equalization between citizens and non citizens to be actually considered in force as regard the access to public administrations, as recently confirmed in the immigration Act too. This principle is even stressed by the contractual international law (Ilo Conv. 143/75): functioning as an indirect parameter for the evaluation of the Constitutional validity of national statutory law, where it prescribes the respect of equal treatment, it allows the national legislator to restrict the extra-European citizens access in the sole cases imposed by the national interest, namely "jobs and functions" for which the same national interest restricts European citizens access too.