ITALY: The current trend of the Italian Courts on calculation of the agents' goodwill indemnity.
More than two years passed since the European Court of Justice in the Honyvem case (Honyvem Informazioni Commerciali Srl v. Mariella De Zotti) declared the method of calculation of goodwill indemnity provided by Italian Economic Collective Agreements as not in compliance with the European Directive.
Following the Honyvem judgment, the Italian Supreme Court has now established the so-called principle of a "guaranteed minimum", according to which, at the end of the relationship, the agent is entitled, at least, to the indemnity provided by Collective Agreements, and to the higher amount provided by Article 1751 of the civil code (which implemented the EC Directive), whenever he is able to prove the existence of the conditions set forth herein.
Lower Courts in many cases continue to apply the rules contained in Collective Agreements but, more and more often, they are required to make such a calculation within the framework of Article 1751 of the civil code.
Even if Courts have not established clear criteria of calculation yet, the current tendency seems to consider the maximum amount provided by Article 1751 civil code (i.e. the yearly commission, calculated on the average of the commissions earned by the agent during the last five years of the contractual relationship) and to reduce it, taking into account the conditions provided by Article 1751, as well as the specific circumstances of the case.
Particularly, the Courts evaluate:
Fabio Bortolotti, IDI country expert for Italy
The text of the judgement, together with all the other relevant texts are available in the in the Italian page of the Reports Section of the website, while the relevant legislation concerning agency and distribution agreements in Italy can be found in the Legislation Section of the Website.
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