This article aims to characterise the ins and outs of the transformations that have marked Italian public action in terms of the management of professional discontinuities. More generally, it is a question of apprehending them by resituating them in the argumentation scheme of labour market reforms. By favouring an entry through the socio-normative arrangements of a singular system of partial unemployment, the explicit article on the one hand, the influence of European activation standard – modelled on the treatment of unemployment – and on the other hand, their appropriation by national actors.