1) Italian Supreme Court, Joint Sections: natural incapacity excludes the burden of the extrajudicial challenge to dismissal within sixty days, but does not suspend or defer the overall time limit of two hundred and forty days

By judgment No. 23486/2026, published on 18 July 2026, the Joint Sections of the Italian Supreme Court provided clarifications on the relationship between natural incapacity and the running of the sixty-day forfeiture period for the extrajudicial challenge to dismissal.

Already in 2025 the Constitutional Court had held that, where the worker is in a state of natural incapacity at the time of receipt of the dismissal notice or during the following sixty days, the burden of the prior extrajudicial challenge under Article 6, paragraph 1, of Law No. 604/1966 does not apply, and the dismissal may be challenged within the overall time limit of two hundred and forty days, including directly by means of an application to the labour court.

The Joint Sections have now added a further piece to this mosaic, emphasizing that the forfeiture period runs from the moment of knowledge of the act to be challenged. Such knowledge, pursuant to Article 1335 of the Civil Code — a provision enacted by the legislature to guarantee legal certainty — is presumed, save in cases of “objective impediment” to the knowability of the act: natural incapacity, by contrast, operates on the subjective plane and has no effect on the presumption under Article 1335 of the Civil Code, with the consequence that the presumption operates irrespective of the individual’s capacity to appreciate the content and significance of the act received and to act accordingly.

As a result, the two-hundred-and-forty-day time limit begins to run from the date of receipt of the dismissal letter even for those in a state of natural incapacity.

2) CJEU: in the context of sports justice, disciplinary sanctions must be amenable to judicial review that is consistent with EU law

By judgment of 16 July 2026 (joined cases C-424/24 and C-425/24, FIGC and CONI), the Court of Justice of the European Union ruled on the requests for a preliminary ruling from the Administrative Court of Lazio (“TAR Lazio”) concerning (i) the applicability, by the national sports court, of sanctions consisting in the temporary prohibition on carrying on professional activities, and (ii) the consequent inability to bring proceedings before the national court for the annulment or suspension of the effects of such sanctions.

The Court first stated that national sports federations, although endowed with autonomy recognized under domestic law, remain bound by the fundamental freedoms of movement. Articles 45 and 56 TFEU do not preclude a national sports federation from imposing on sports officials a temporary prohibition on carrying on the professional activities falling within its competence on account of false financial and accounting statements, provided that the provisions permitting such a sanction pursue a legitimate objective of general interest — such as the integrity of competitions — and comply with the principle of proportionality, applying transparent, objective and non-discriminatory criteria that are amenable to effective judicial review.

Secondly, the judgment specifies that Article 19 TEU and Article 47 of the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union do not preclude national legislation that limits the powers of the national court to compensation alone, excluding the annulment of sanctions and interim measures, provided that at least the sports justice body of last instance is an independent and impartial “tribunal”, established in advance by law as regards its existence, composition and organization, having a genuinely judicial role, following a procedure that respects the principle of adversarial proceedings, and having effective powers of review over the sanction.

To access the decision, click here.