The Interplay of State Immunity and Contractual Forum Selection Clauses in Employment Cases: Return to Normalcy

In Judgment No. 18801 of 2022, in the context of an employment dispute with a foreign State, the Corte di Cassazione declined to give effect to a contract clause conferring exclusive jurisdiction to the courts of the employer State and upheld Italian jurisdiction. With this decision, which was based on the limitations on party autonomy in respect to contracts of employment set forth in the EU Brussels I Regulation, the Court drastically departed from recent precedents where it had declined jurisdiction in the presence of similar contract clauses. Such precedents, in their turn, stood in stark contrast to the earlier jurisprudence of the Court, where jurisdiction had been affirmed based on the Brussels I Regulation. This contribution argues that this ruling constitutes a welcome and much-needed turnaround, bringing the Court’s case law back into line with EU law and the case law of the European Court of Justice and significantly improving the judicial protection afforded to employees of foreign States in Italy – a veritable return to normalcy in employment disputes with foreign States.