The inclusive allowance proposed by Meloni would increase overall poverty in Italy, according to Euractiv.
The European Commission’s analysis concluded that Meloni’s initiative would worsen both absolute and child poverty. The analysis also emphasises Italy’s significant gap with the EU on various employment indicators, including long-term employment, wage growth, and working poverty rates.
The Inclusion Allowance is a supplement of between €6,000 and €7,560 per year for families in which one member has a disability, is a minor, is at least 60 years old, is disadvantaged and is listed in an official care and assistance programme.
The measure is expected to increase absolute and child poverty rates by 0.8 and 0.5 percentage points respectively compared to the previous income support scheme. The Commission states that restrictions on eligibility criteria will affect the benefit’s effectiveness by limiting access to certain demographic categories within families.
According to the strategic model presented by the Bank of Italy, the inclusive allowance would reduce the number of beneficiary families by 40% for families with Italian citizenship and 66% for families with other citizenship.
Despite modest improvements in 2023, Italy maintains one of the EU’s highest rates of underemployment (16.5% compared to the EU average of 12.9% in 2022) and a high level of involuntary part-time employment (57.8% compared to the EU average of 21.5%), mainly affecting women.
Italy’s nominal wage growth of 12% between 2013 and 2022 is half the EU level of 23%, while the purchasing power of wages has fallen by 2% compared to EU growth of 2.5%, the commission notes.
Santo Biondo, a member of the national secretariat of UIL, the Italian Trade Union Confederation, wrote:
“We have long expressed strong concern about this government’s policies on combating poverty, and the European Commission’s judgement, unfortunately, confirms our assessments. We renew our call to the government and Minister [of Labour and Social Policies Marina Elvira] Calderone to reconsider their stance and to initiate a dialogue.”
The Italian government quickly objected to the Commission’s analysis, arguing that the EU study was static and partial and did not take into account the dynamics of activation caused by the new measures and the country’s growth of employment.
The effects of the active policies introduced by the government cannot be fully evaluated on this basis, as the Citizenship Income has been replaced not only by the Inclusion Allowance but also by the Support for Training and Work (Sfl), which plays an essential role in employment support.
