Court overturns compensation ruling for two former aides to Ilaria Salis (AVS)

Brussels – The Milan Court of Appeal yesterday (13 October) quashed the first-instance judgement which had ordered the MEP from the Left – elected as part of the Green and Left Alliance – Ilaria Salis, to pay around 300,000 euros in compensation to two former staff members for unfair dismissal. Salis announced the decision on her social media channels, where she welcomed it “with satisfaction”. “As I have maintained from the very beginning, I had not been placed in a position to become aware of the proceedings and, consequently, to exercise my right to a defence,” she stated.

“The entire first-instance trial took place in my total and blameless absence, without any possibility of rebuttal,” the MEP added, describing the situation as “surreal.” According to Salis, the judgement, “issued in the absence of rebuttal was at the centre of a shameful media campaign, orchestrated by the usual mud-slinging machine that systematically targets, even with unfair methods, those who fight on the left and do not bow their heads. But no attack will ever be able to stop me,” she concluded.

A judge in the Labour Division of the Court of Milan had issued the ruling last March. Salis’s two former assistants had turned to a Milan-based law firm, which challenged the letter terminating, with immediate effect, the two ‘coordinated and continuous collaboration’ (Co.Co.Co.) contracts signed by the two in February 2024. The judge had ruled against the MEP for failing to appear in the proceedings and for failing to provide evidence of just cause for the dismissal.