Table of contents
The Law Decree on employment for 2025 (Law No. 203/2024), which came into force on January 12th, 2025, made important changes to the current legislation.
Agile working: new reporting obligations
Entities adopting agile working policies must comply with new Ministry of Labour reporting deadlines:
- Within 5 days from the start of the agile working contract implementation, and
- within 5 days after any modification or termination event.
Fixed-term contracts
New rules for the probationary period in fixed-term contracts:
- Relations up to 6 months: minimum of 2 days and maximum of 15 days.
- Relations between 6 and 12 months: maximum 30 days.
- Relations longer than 12 months: the provisions of national collective agreements (CCNL) apply.
Fixed-term and staff leasing contracts
Causal reason requirement removed for contracts longer than 12 months (in the case of unemployed workers or young people on their first work experience).
Extended the exceptions to the limits on the number of agency workers to include specific cases such as:
- Start-up phases of new activities.
- People belonging to disadvantaged groups (young people, adults with dependants, members of ethnic minorities, etc.).
- Workers over 50.
- Unemployed for at least six months.
Apprenticeship
Introduced the possibility of transforming first-level apprenticeship contracts into:
- professional’ apprenticeship, to obtain a professional qualification.
- advanced training’ apprenticeship, with the aim of specialisation.
The above changes require the individual training plan to be updated and comply with the overall duration limits laid down by collective agreements.
Payment of debts to INPS and INAIL
Instalment payments of up to 60 months of contributions and insurance premiums are allowed, through a simplified procedure at INPS and INAIL.
Medical examinations
- Preventive examinations: the employer can no longer choose to have the pre-employment examination carried out by the prevention department of the ASL: the competent doctor will always be in charge;
- Returning after long absences: an examination is compulsory only if deemed necessary by the competent doctor, who will in any case issue a suitability opinion even without conducting a medical examination.