Francesco Lollobrigida, an Italian minister and high-ranking member of Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s Fratelli d’Italia (FdI) party, has warned that the country risks “ethnic replacement” due to the sustained mass influx of foreigners paired with dismally low birthrates, thereby prompting the ire of the country’s left-globalist opposition.
Lollobrigida, Italy’s Agriculture Minister, made his comments in response to recent figures released by the Italian National Institute of Statistics (ISTAT) which revealed that, at 393,000, the number of births recorded last year was the lowest since 1861, when the country unified, the Milan-based newspaper Corriere della Sera reports.
With those numbers, Italy recorded the third-lowest birth rate in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD).
Lollobrigida delivered the comments while speaking at a conference of the Italian Confederation of Free Workers’ Unions (Cisal), saying: “We can’t give in to the idea of ethnic replacement: the Italians are having fewer children and we’re replacing them with someone else. That is not the way.”
He argued that the Italian government must “build a welfare system that allows people to work and have families” and “support young couples to find employment”—something that the governments of Hungary and Poland, both of whom have pro-natalist, anti-mass migration policy positions, have already done.
“The regions where there is less welfare see much more serious demographic decline than others,” Lollobrigida added.
The agriculture minister later called attention to the fact that, as the grandson of an emigrant, he is not against controlled immigration. However, he made it clear that he does regard mass illegal migration as a threat to the country, arguing that it risks causing irreversible changes to Italy’s demographics:
When the internal demand for labor is exhausted, workers from other countries can and should be sought to satisfy the labor demand. It must be clarified that the first enemy of regular immigration, made through organized flows, is immigration illegal and clandestine.
Elly Schlein, the new leader of Italy’s Democratic Party, did not take kindly to Lollobrigida’s remarks, calling them “disgusting” and “reminiscent of the fascist regime of Benito Mussolini.”
According to figures from the interior ministry, 34,715 illegal migrants—a record number— have arrived on Italian shores so far this year.
