Sparks are flying in response to the cancellation of an minimum income program put in place only four years ago, with protests, demonstrations, and even threats against PM Giorgia Meloni from Italians losing their benefits, as well as stern criticism from local officials.
The Italian government rolled out the Citizenship Income (RDC) programme in 2019. The benefit was proposed by the populist Five Star Movement (M5S), which saw this minimum income policy as a pillar of its overall platform. The general purpose of the benefit was to fight poverty and encourage people to seek employment.
In late July, around 160,000 Italian families received a text message from the Istituto Nazionale della Previdenza Sociale (INPS), which is in charge of the Citizenship Income scheme, along with social security, informing them that the programme would be halted immediately, with the newspaper Il Giornale reporting that an additional 80,000 texts will be sent out at the end of August.
The cancellation of the programme was included in last year’s budget and limits Citizenship Income to households that either have at least one disabled person, at least one minor or a member over the age of 60. Other families will be taken care of by social security instead and given access to training courses by the INPS.
Protests against the government’s move have already begun across parts of Italy, with a man in Terrasini, Palermo, who after losing his Citizenship Income threatened to set fire to the local mayor’s office.
The mayor of Bergamo, Giorgio Gori, slammed the move saying,
These people, although poor, are considered by the government to be employable only because they do not live with a minor, with someone elderly or with a disabled person. This is how the government makes war on the poor and unloads social tensions on the territories. Directing them to the municipalities is culpably wrong.
In Induno Olona in Varese, meanwhile, graffiti was found threatening to kill Prime Minister Meloni, stating, “Meloni, you will die for the Citizenship Income!”
Local mayor Marco Cavallin said the writing was soon taken down and said, “You can disagree, but the choice made by the government is legitimate.”
He went on to echo Mayor Gori, stating that the national government should not have placed responsibility on the municipalities without giving them adequate resources.
“In Induno we try not to leave anyone behind. To those in need we will always try to give support, at least as long as the resources allow us,” Cavallin said.
Alberto Mingardi, the founder of the Bruno Leoni Institute, a liberal think tank that promotes libertarian ideas, said that he supported the Meloni government’s move to reform the income policy, calling it “very badly created.”
“Universal assistance instruments such as that may have a place, but they should be alternative and not added to other existing welfare instruments. And above all, they should be thought of within a comprehensive review of the tax system,” he said.
He added:
The protests do not surprise me because it is clear that, when you give a subsidy to such a large audience of individuals, you are creating a small army that will do everything to protect this economic aid. It is now up to the government to show what it is made of when it comes to this context. Mrs Thatcher said that a woman is like a tea bag: you can see how strong she is when you put her in boiling water. The same goes for our premier.
Tommaso Foti, leader of Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s Brothers of Italy (FdI) in the lower house of the Italian parliament, stated that he was happy with the move saying that the Citizenship Income “has cost 30 billion [euros] in five years without achieving the purpose of accompanying work.”
“The intervention is not to recover the money but to return to an active labour policy,” he said and slammed the left-wing Democratic Party (PD) for embracing the Citizenship Income after fiercely opposing it when it was first proposed and implemented.
The minimum income plan has had its controversies since implementation, as there have been several reports of foreigners scamming the system for millions of euros.
In October of last year, 300 migrants were reported to the State Police of Cagliari for defrauding the Italian taxpayer of as much as eight million euros in Citizenship Income benefits, with the migrants pocketing around 600 euros a month on average.
Over 950 people were reported to police in April of last year in Lazio, Tuscany, Umbria, Marche and Sardinia for defrauding the Citizenship Income programme worth around five million euros. In some cases, some of the foreigners who claimed the benefit did not even live in Italy.
