A tribunal this month ruled that three British foreign-language lecturers were victims of illegal discrimination when the University of Verona denied them the right to apply for temporary supplementary teaching jobs in English at the faculty where they had been employed for more than ten years. The case was originally brought to the European Court of Justice under the Maastricht treaty, but was referred back to the Italian courts in November 1997 to establish whether or not there had been "hidden discrimination on the basis of foreign nationality".