Il dubitabile posticipo alla fine del rapporto lavorativo della decorrenza della prescrizione dei contributi pensionistici

Arguing on the basis of Dir. 91/533/EEC on the employee’s right to be informed of the remuneration as-pects of his employment contract, the judgment of 31 March 2025 of the Court of Naples made a request on the interpretation of Union law to the Court of Justice of the EU, proposing five questions concerning pension contributions. If the Court of Luxembourg accepts the construction propose by the Italian Tribu-nal, the legal regime of the commencement of the five years’ time limit of duration for compulsory contri-butions for pensions will be aligned, by way of jurisprudence, to that which applies to the right to remu-neration. The latter runs only from the end of the employment relationship, according to the well-known decisions of the Italian Constitutional Court recently extended by the Supreme Court to employees of larger undertakings. Indeed, applying such a rule also to social security contributions would be a partial remedy to the protection gap created by the Court of Cassation’s denial of the employee’s right to com-putation of missing contributions at the expense of social security. Such a remedy, if granted by the Court of Luxembourg, would greatly increase the time frame for enforcing employer’s payment, which would be useful for the financial coverage of contribution gaps. This, however, would also imply a con-siderable increase in the employers’ liability to pay contributions, which would be retroactive for even decades, if the employment relationship had lasted for a long time. Moreover, enforcing contributions payments would entail complex litigation in cases where the moment of termination of the employment relationship is disputed.