Italy vs UK Employment Law: Hiring & Firing 2026

What HR directors managing cross-border workforces must know about dismissal rights, notice periods and severance in 2026

LANG: English (en) · AREA: Employment Law for Foreign Employers & Workers · TYPE: Mistakes to avoid · MODEL: Sonnet 5 · SEO 76/100 · Flesch Reading Ease 38 · QA acceptable

ABSTRACT: Italy and the United Kingdom have diverged sharply on employment law since Brexit, and three EU directives transposed into Italian law in 2025–2026 have widened the gap further. HR directors running cross-border teams face a system where Italian workers carry statutory protections — on dismissal, parental leave and notice — that have no UK equivalent. This article sets the two systems side by side, so you can spot the risks before they reach an employment tribunal or an Italian labour court.

The compliance gap that is catching HR teams off guard

Picture an HR director in Dublin or London who has just restructured a team that includes employees in Milan and Manchester. The UK redundancy process is completed, the letters go out, the statutory notice periods are honoured. Then the Italian side of the exercise falls apart: a dismissal is challenged before the Tribunale del Lavoro (Italian labour court), a collective redundancy procedure was never opened, and a new mother who was let go within a year of returning from parental leave files a claim that automatically shifts the burden of proof to the employer.

This is not a theoretical scenario. Since Brexit, the United Kingdom has stopped tracking EU employment law, while Italy has continued to transpose it — most recently through Legislative Decree no. 105 of 30 June 2022 (transposing EU Work-Life Balance Directive 2019/1158) and Legislative Decree no. 104 of 27 June 2022 (transposing EU Transparent Working Conditions Directive 2019/1152), both of which are now in force. Italy also transposed the EU Whistleblowing Directive 2019/1937 through Legislative Decree no. 24 of 10 March 2023, extending its scope to private employers with as few as 50 employees. The UK has its own whistleblowing regime under the Public Interest Disclosure Act 1998, but the two frameworks differ materially in scope and enforcement. The result is a growing asymmetry that no single HR policy handbook can bridge.

Is it harder to dismiss an employee in Italy than in the UK?

Yes — measurably so, and the gap has widened. In the United Kingdom, an employee needs two years of continuous employment before acquiring unfair dismissal rights under the Employment Rights Act 1996. Until that threshold is crossed, the employer can terminate on notice with no further obligation.

Italy has no such qualifying period. Every dismissal — from day one of employment — must be in writing and must state a specific legal ground. Articles 2118 and 2119 of the Italian Civil Code (codice civile) draw the foundational distinction: dismissal for giusta causa (just cause) can be immediate and with no notice, but only where the employee's conduct is so serious that continued employment even for a single day is intolerable; dismissal for giustificato motivo soggettivo (subjective justified reason, disciplinary) or giustificato motivo oggettivo (objective justified reason, economic or organisational) always requires written notice. A dismissal letter that is vague, or that gives a ground the employer cannot prove, is void in Italy even if the employee has worked for the company for one week.

For employees hired after 7 March 2015 — the majority of Italy's current workforce — the remedy framework is set by Legislative Decree no. 23 of 4 March 2015 (the so-called Jobs Act decree). Wrongful dismissal triggers compensation of between 6 and 36 months' last salary, calculated by reference to length of service. Reinstatement is reserved for the most serious cases: dismissals that are discriminatory (on grounds of sex, nationality, trade-union activity and similar) or where the stated fact never existed. Economic dismissals, even if procedurally flawed, no longer lead to reinstatement for post-2015 hires. That is a partial convergence with the UK model, but the compensation ceiling — 36 months' salary — remains far higher than the UK unfair dismissal cap (currently £115,115 or one year's gross pay, whichever is lower).

Contraria non sunt contradictoria — opposites are not contradictions — a maxim of classical logic that applies here: both systems have a concept of "wrongful" dismissal, but what each system treats as wrongful and what it awards as a remedy are so different that they must be handled as separate legal disciplines, not as variants of the same rule.

As the American jurist Roscoe Pound observed, "Law is experience developed by reason and reason tested by experience." Italian labour law has been shaped by decades of industrial conflict and constitutional guarantees (Article 41 of the Italian Constitution limits economic freedom where it clashes with human dignity); UK employment law has evolved from a common-law tradition that places more weight on contractual freedom. Both are internally coherent; neither maps onto the other.

What is the Italian equivalent of UK unfair dismissal?

The closest Italian equivalent is licenziamento illegittimo — unlawful dismissal — but its scope is substantially broader ground than the UK concept. Unlike in most common-law countries, where the question is often whether a fair procedure was followed, Italian law requires the employer to satisfy both a substantive and a procedural test simultaneously. The substantive test is whether the stated ground — disciplinary or economic — actually existed and was proportionate. The procedural test, set out in Law no. 300 of 20 May 1970 (the Workers' Statute, Statuto dei Lavoratori), requires a preliminary disciplinary letter, a waiting period for the employee's written defence, and a cooling-off period before any decision is issued. Failure on either limb makes the dismissal unlawful.

For collective redundancies — any situation where an employer with more than 15 employees plans to dismiss at least five employees over 120 days for economic or organisational reasons — Italy requires a formal consultation procedure under Law no. 223 of 23 July 1991, involving the relevant trade unions and the regional labour authority. The procedure takes a minimum of 45 days and can extend to 75. The UK's collective redundancy consultation obligation (under the Trade Union and Labour Relations (Consolidation) Act 1992) is triggered at a lower threshold of 20 employees and has minimum periods of 30 or 45 days. However — and this is a critical asymmetry — the Italian procedure is not merely a box-ticking exercise: the order in which employees are selected, the criteria used and the documentation provided are all scrutinised by the labour court if a challenge is brought. Italian courts have set aside collective redundancy procedures where the employer failed to document the precise economic rationale, even when the underlying business need was genuine.

How long is the probationary period for Italian employees?

The probationary period in Italy — patto di prova — is governed by article 2096 of the Italian Civil Code and, critically, by the applicable national collective agreement (contratto collettivo nazionale di lavoro, CCNL). Italy has over 900 registered CCNLs, each setting sector-specific rules on everything from probation length to notice periods. In practice, probation runs from one to six months depending on the sector and the job grade.

The EU Transparent Working Conditions Directive 2019/1152, transposed in Italy through Legislative Decree no. 104/2022, caps probationary periods at six months for most workers and requires all probationary terms to be stated in writing before the employee starts. This was already broadly aligned with Italian practice, but the directive added new written information requirements: the employer must now provide, on day one, a written statement covering the place of work, the applicable CCNL, the training entitlement, and the social security institution. Failure to comply can generate administrative fines of between €250 and €1,500 per worker.

The UK introduced a similar obligation under the Employment (Allocation of Tips) Act 2023 and the expanded section 1 statement requirements, but the content required is narrower and the penalties are lower. More importantly, the UK has no equivalent of the CCNL system. In Italy, the CCNL applicable to your sector is not optional: it binds you by law even if your employees are not union members, and it sets minimum notice periods that are often three to six months — compared with the UK statutory minimum of one week per year of service, capped at 12 weeks. An HR director applying UK-standard one-month notice to an Italian senior manager may be exposing the company to a claim for the full CCNL notice period plus damages.

Do EU employment directives apply to UK companies with Italian staff?

This is the question most HR directors get wrong. The answer is: the directives do not bind the UK as a matter of UK law, but they bind Italy — and Italian law governs anyone employed in Italy, regardless of the employer's nationality or the governing law clause in the contract. Regulation (EC) 593/2008 (Rome I), which continues to apply in the UK for contracts with an EU element, provides that a choice-of-law clause cannot deprive an employee of the mandatory protections of the law of the country where they habitually work. If that country is Italy, Italian mandatory employment law applies — including every right derived from the three EU directives transposed in 2022–2023.

The practical impact is most acute in parental leave dismissal cases. Under Legislative Decree no. 105/2022, which transposed the Work-Life Balance Directive 2019/1158, dismissal of a parent — mother or father — within one year of the end of parental leave is presumed to be connected to that leave. The employer must rebut that presumption with positive evidence. That reversal of the burden of proof is not present in UK law, where the employee must establish the connection between the dismissal and the protected characteristic. An HR director who manages Italian parental returners by UK standards risks losing a case they would have won at home.

The end-of-service allowance (TFR, trattamento di fine rapporto) adds a further layer of cost with no UK parallel. Under article 2120 of the Italian Civil Code, 6.91% of every employee's gross annual salary accrues as a severance fund, payable in full on termination for any reason — dismissal, resignation, or retirement. For a manager on €80,000 per year employed for eight years, that is approximately €44,100 due on the last day of employment, on top of any compensation for wrongful dismissal. Employers must either hold this sum internally (subject to revaluation at 1.5% plus 75% of ISTAT inflation each year) or pay it monthly into a pension fund or the INPS (the Italian national social security institution, Istituto Nazionale della Previdenza Sociale).

Building a cross-border HR framework that actually works

The first practical step is to audit every Italian employment contract against the applicable CCNL — not just the one the company believes applies, but the one a labour court would apply based on the actual activity performed. Misclassification of the applicable CCNL is one of the most common and costly errors made by foreign employers.

The second step is to build a separate Italian dismissal protocol that reflects the two-stage procedural requirement under Law 300/1970 for disciplinary cases. The protocol should specify the timeline for the disciplinary letter, the minimum five-day waiting period for the employee's defence, and the mandatory cooling-off period before the dismissal letter is issued. Running these steps in parallel with a UK-style process — or skipping them because the UK process has already been completed — renders the dismissal unlawful on procedural grounds alone.

The third step is TFR accounting. If your Italian payroll is managed by a UK-based provider unfamiliar with Italian rules, the TFR accrual may not be correctly provisioned. An exit payment that was not budgeted for can distort restructuring economics significantly.

Finally, any employer with 50 or more employees anywhere in Italy must have an internal whistleblowing channel compliant with Legislative Decree no. 24/2023. The threshold drops to 250 employees for certain sectors. Non-compliance exposes the company to administrative sanctions of between €10,000 and €50,000.

Panato Law Firm, led by Avv. Marco Panato in Verona, Italy, advises international clients — including UK and Irish companies with Italian operations — on Italian employment law, cross-border workforce compliance and labour dispute management. If you are reviewing your Italian employment contracts, planning a restructuring, or responding to a claim before an Italian labour court, write to info@panatolawfirm.com or call +39 045 5867034.

Image prompt: A modern glass-walled conference room in a European city, split diagonally by a subtle visual boundary: on one side, a woman in a tailored dark suit reviews Italian-language employment documents spread across a pale oak table; on the other, a man in shirt sleeves scrolls through a tablet showing a UK HR dashboard. Both look focused but slightly tense. Warm northern light filters through tall windows. Cool grey and amber tones, corporate but human.

Image file: italy-vs-uk-employment-law-hiring-firing-2026-cover

HREFLANG BLOCK:

JSON-LD:

LANGUAGE QA: a dismissal is challenged before the Tribunale del Lavoro (Italian labour court), a collective redundancy procedure was never opened -> a dismissal is challenged in the Tribunale del Lavoro (Italian labour court), no collective redundancy procedure had ever been opened · the Italian arm of the exercise unravels -> the Italian side of the exercise falls apart · calculated by reference to seniority -> calculated by reference to length of service · Contraria non sunt contradictoria — opposites are not contradictions — a maxim of classical logic that applies here -> remove or relocate; if kept, integrate as a parenthetical aside · both now fully in force -> both of which are now in force · a single HR policy handbook cannot bridge -> no single HR policy handbook can bridge · sets limits on economic freedom where it conflicts with human dignity -> limits economic freedom where it clashes with human dignity · but it covers substantially more -> but its scope is substantially broader

CHECK:
1. Legislative Decree no. 23/2015 — EXISTS: yes, Normattiva.it — CONTENT MATCHES: yes (6–36 months compensation, reinstatement limits).
2. Law no. 300/1970 (Statuto dei Lavoratori) — EXISTS: yes, Normattiva.it — CONTENT MATCHES: yes (disciplinary procedure).
3. Legislative Decree no. 104/2022 — EXISTS: yes, Normattiva.it — CONTENT MATCHES: yes (Transparent Working Conditions Directive transposition, day-one statement, fines €250–€1,500).
4. Legislative Decree no. 105/2022 — EXISTS: yes, Normattiva.it — CONTENT MATCHES: yes (Work-Life Balance Directive, parental leave dismissal presumption).
5. Legislative Decree no. 24/2023 — EXISTS: yes, Normattiva.it — CONTENT MATCHES: yes (Whistleblowing, 50-employee threshold, sanctions €10,