After some remarks on the advantages and disadvantages of the system of judicial protection that has been so far applied to public employees in Italy, the paper analyses the new judicial model introduced by a recent reform. The judicial protection will be temporarily left to the administrative judge; although some im-portant problems of adjustment will immediately emerge. Theseare mainly related to the changes in the regulation of public em-ployees' labour relations, which are now partly ruled by civil law, as in the private sector. In addition, the implementation of the new system, which is based on the division of judicial protection between the civil judge and the administrative judge, will bring about new difficulties. These are especially due to the unclear dis-tinction between the issues coming under the jurisdiction of the ordinary judge and those left to the administrative one as well as to the complex interdependences linking these issues together