MEPs will today examine discrimination in Italian universities against lecturers from Britain and other EU countries, in a case that highlights continued discrimination in the EU's single market.

Italy has been condemned six times by the European Court of Justice for paying British, French, Belgian and other lecturers as little as half what Italian counterparts receive in universities.

Successive Rome governments have been accused of failing to end the discrimination despite pleas from British ministers including Boris Johnson.

Highly qualified British academics teaching English in Italy had salaries halved after an Italian law reduced them to the status of language laboratory technicians.

Lecturers fought the legislation in Italian courts and won compensation but the universities refuse to pay up.

On Tuesday, the Chairman of the ALLSI (Association of Foreign Lecturers in Italy), Scotsman David Petrie, will address the Petitions Committee of the European Parliament about the case.

The stand-off climaxed last July when the Italian Supreme Court refused to submit to the jurisdiction of the European court of Justic despite a Treaty obligation.

Italy's highest court in four separate cases concerning foreign lecturers working at the universities of Catania, Florence, Naples Parthanope and Venice refused to refer the cases to the ECJ.