Medicine, Tor Vergata's Tirana campus 'legitimate': the TAR rejects the appeal

The assignment of the seat in Albania for the Faculty of Medicine of the Tor Vergata University of Rome is "legitimate": this is what was established by the Lazio Regional Administrative Court that rejected the appeal on the branch office in Tirana.

"The name of the course venue reported on the Universitaly platform ('Medicina Roma Tor Vergata Tirana') - reads the order - clearly and unequivocally indicated the geographical location of the course in the city of Tirana [...] so that no infringement of the principle of transparency appears configurable'.

The Tirana location was 'legitimately included in the access system and competed, like the other accredited locations, in the formation of the national ranking list, constituting one of the options legitimately selectable by candidates'.

The order also addresses the issue of cost. A few months ago, when the national rankings for the filter semester were published, some students assigned to the Tirana campus of Tor Vergata had denounced the higher university fees. The figures, also with the intervention of Minister Anna Maria Bernini, were equalled to those in Italy.

With regard to student contributions, it is stated that 'on the institutional website of the MUR and the University of Tor Vergata, a notice was published, prior to the notification of this appeal, stating that students enrolled in the course at the Tirana campus for the academic year 2025/2026 would be subject to university taxation in accordance with Italian criteria linked to the ISEE, with the result that the contribution treatment of students assigned to the Tirana campus would be equal to that applied to students enrolled at the Rome campus and any alleged economic disparity would disappear; the fact that that equal treatment was provided for the academic year 2025/2026 only does not constitute a breach of the lawfulness of the assignment, since the applicant has not shown that for students assigned to other Italian campuses there is a binding guarantee that their contributions will be the same for the entire cycle of studies'.