Giorgia Meloni is cutting benefits for out-of-work Italians, reducing taxes for employers and making it easier to hire workers on a short-term contract.
Many of the reforms were in the prime minister’s election manifesto, but the reintroduction of job vouchers — a way to hire workers without a contract — is a surprise.
I’ll explain what’s changing, what isn’t — and why Italy’s labor market is such a mess. (more…)
The Italian Senate has voted to raise penalties for human traffickers and narrow the eligibility criteria for asylum.
The reforms are part of Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s policy to bring down immigration. They have yet to be approved by the lower house, but her government has a majority there as well.
Meloni’s next step will be convincing other European leaders of migration reform. There is not much more Italy can do on its own to stop arrivals by sea, which quadrupled in the first three months of this year. (more…)
Europe’s refusal to allow the sale of cultivated meat is bad enough, but Italy is taking it one step further. Its right-wing government on Tuesday decided to ban the production and sale of all “synthetic foods”.
No wonder food innovators are fleeing to America, Israel and Singapore. (more…)
Giorgia Meloni may get her wish.
When the Italian conservative party leader, since elected prime minister, proposed to fund asylum centers in North Africa, she was called a xenophobe by the left in her own country and abroad.
Now it is part of a tentative EU agreement to manage asylum applications, which are approximating the records of 2015 and 2016.
European migration ministers have agreed that transit countries like Tunisia could be paid to shelter asylum seekers. The same countries would need to take back illegal migrants who crossed the Mediterranean Sea by boat.
Such boats regularly capsize, killing an estimated 1,200 migrants last year.
Ministers also discussed trade sanctions for countries that do little to stop irregular migration. (more…)
When Italy’s Democratic Party lost the election in September, I told Newsweek they had made a mistake running on abortion, LGBT and immigration rights:
That helped the right more than it helped the left. Social justice resonates with university-educated Italians in big cities like Bologna and Florence. It doesn’t convince the garbage collector in Naples or the unemployed single mother in Palermo that the left has their interests at heart.
So of course they doubled down on it. (more…)
Italy’s new right-wing government has backed away from a plan to let shops refuse card payments under €60.
The country’s previous government, led by former European Central Bank chief Mario Draghi, required companies to accept all card payments in an attempt to fight tax evasion. Businesses that refused were fined €30 per transaction plus 4 percent of the amount.
The policy was one of the EU’s conditions for releasing COVID-19 recovery funds, of which Italy is the largest recipient. (more…)
Europe is the throes of another asylum crisis. The 27 countries of the EU plus Norway and Switzerland, which have open borders with the bloc, received some 98,000 asylum applications in September, the most in six years. Figures for the first nine months of 2022 suggest that most, and possibly all, member states will match the records of 2015, when 1.3 million people applied for asylum in the EU.
Some 548,000 asylum seekers are waiting for a decision on whether they can stay.
The figures include few Ukrainians, who can remain in the EU for up to three years without applying for asylum.
I’ll take a deep dive into the numbers before looking at how three member states are coping with the high influx: France, Italy and Netherlands. (more…)
Giorgia Meloni has set out her program in an inaugural address to the Italian parliament.
The far-right party leader, who won the election a month ago to become Italy’s first woman prime minister, was sworn in by President Sergio Mattarella on Sunday. She leads a coalition of three right-wing parties.
She gave the top posts in her cabinet to centrists:
Meloni’s speech was also reassuring. In place of the fiery culture-war rhetoric of her campaign came sensible proposals for family policy and immigration, empty gestures on climate policy and the environment, and firm commitments to the Atlantic alliance, EU and Ukraine. (more…)
Giorgia Meloni’s call for a “naval blockade” of illegal immigration across the Mediterranean Sea has got plenty of attention, but the likely future prime minister of Italy has another, more humane idea: create European asylum application centers in North Africa, so migrants — many don’t qualify for asylum — don’t attempt a futile and perilous sea journey.
Italy receives an unusually high (for Europe) share of asylum seekers from safe African countries: Ivory Coast, Mali, Morocco, Nigeria, Senegal, Tunisia. Unless they fear persecution in their home country for their political beliefs, religion or sexuality, those asylum seekers are usually sent back.
That doesn’t mean they leave. Immigration authorities don’t have the manpower to escort every rejected asylum seeker back home. Some countries refuse to take their people back. A share — we don’t know how many — remain in Italy illegally. Others try for asylum in another European country.
Since illegal aliens cannot legally work, many end up either exploited or as criminals, and often homeless. (more…)
The votes have been counted in 61,400 polling stations and they confirm what the exit poll told us on Sunday night: Italy has lurched to the right.
But not by much.
The four right-parties have 44 percent of the votes. That’s up from 37 percent in 2018, but closer to their historical average.
The right has become more right-wing. The Brothers of Italy, whose support went up from 4 to 26 percent, didn’t win many new voters; they cannibalized Matteo Salvini’s (formerly Northern) League, which has been reduced to a party of Po Valley homeowners and businessmen who despise the Italy south of the Arno River. Giorgia Meloni would lead Italy’s first right-wing government since Silvio Berlusconi stepped down in 2011, and the most right-wing government since the end of World War II.
The south, including Sardinia and Sicily, has about a third of the Italian population but not even one-fifth of its industrial base. It stuck with the Five Star Movement, the party of the left-behind Italy.
Ideologically and geographically, the social democrats are fighting a war on two fronts from their strongholds in Emilia-Romagna (the region around Bologna) and Tuscany (Florence). They did reasonably well in neighboring Liguria, Marche and Umbria, but there was a time when the left could count on working-class support from the south of the peninsula.
The defection of former party leader Matteo Renzi, and his union with the once-marginal liberals, which got 8 percent, also weakened the Democrats from within. (more…)
Italians vote in early elections on September 25. All 400 seats in the Chamber of Deputies and 200 elected seats in the Senate will be contested.
The elections were called after Prime Minister Mario Draghi lost the confidence of the populist and right-wing parties in his coalition. Polls predict a victory for the right.
Here is everything you need to know. (more…)
European countries spent €280 billion on subsidies and tax cuts in the last year to help businesses and households pay their energy bills.
It may not be enough.
Prices surged when Russia expanded its war in Ukraine in February and European states agreed to reduce their imports of Russian natural gas. The EU as a whole got 40 percent of its gas from Russia in previous years. That is down to 20 percent.
But there are more factors pushing up electricity and gas prices. Here is an overview, including what governments have done to ameliorate the effects. (more…)
Italy’s next coalition government will likely consist of three right-wing parties: the Brothers of Italy, League and Forza Italia (Forward Italy) are polling at close to 50 percent support, which should be enough to give them control of both chambers of parliament.
For the first time, the Brothers of Italy, who split from Forza in 2012, would place first and provide the prime minister: Giorgia Meloni.
The (formerly Northern) League, led by Matteo Salvini, won the election in 2018, but conservatives were disappointed when it formed a government with the left-populist Five Star Movement, and even more disappointed when Salvini left the government in a failed bid to force snap elections.
Forza has been in third place since their leader, Silvio Berlusconi, lost reelection in 2013.
The parties have released a joint manifesto for the election in September that is light on detail but nevertheless provides the best clues about what a right-wing government might do. Here are the main points. (more…)
Mario Draghi is on his way out.
The former European Central Bank chief, prime minister of Italy for eighteen months, failed on Thursday to keep his coalition together. The populist-left Five Star Movement and right-wing League and Forza Italia boycotted a confidence vote in parliament.
Draghi’s resignation could trigger an early election in the autumn, which would push passage of the 2023 budget, including measures to help businesses and families cope with inflation, to next year.
It also puts a six-year, €221-billion investment and reform program at risk that’s funded by the EU. (I analyzed the plan here.) Right-wing opponents are polling in first place. (more…)
