Why there are no transport strikes in Italy in August

If you’re travelling to Italy this month and checking for updates on the country’s notorious transport strikes, you might wonder why none are being reported.

Have the unions been placated? Not quite. 

Strikes affecting the airline sector are in fact banned under Italian law during the country’s peak travel season – that’s between July 27th and September 5th, according to civil aviation authority Enac.

READ ALSO: What’s open and what’s closed in Italy in August?

This is called the franchigia estiva, or ‘summer exemption’, and it exists partly to protect Italy’s highly lucrative travel and tourism industry.

Other dates on which air travel sector strikes are banned (known as periodi di franchigia, or ‘exemption periods’) include December 18th to January 7th, and the three days before and three days after a national, regional or European election.

While the strike ban doesn’t apply to other forms of transport, such protests are seen as far less effective if they don’t impact the airline sector.

As you can see from Italy’s official calendar of approved strikes, there’s not much planned in high season.

In some cases, localised strike action can be allowed – but there’s also the fact that the weather is scorching and most Italians are on holiday for part of August.

However, that’s not to say travel in the country is guaranteed to be trouble-free this month.

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There are public transport closures to contend with as many Italian cities take advantage of the quiet month to do some maintenance work on metro or tram lines. Local rail services are often impacted for the same reason.

Even some of Italy’s major high-speed rail routes are affected by maintenence work this summer with Italy scrambling to spend EU infrastructure funding before a looming deadline.

And August is known for being a bad month for driving as summer holiday travel means traffic jams are common, especially on routes to and from coastal destinations. We have a complete list of the dates to avoid here.

Like pretty much everything else in the country, transport strikes will start up again following the rientro in early September.