Inside Italy is our weekly look at some of the news, talking points and gossip from Italy that you might not have heard about. It’s published each Saturday and members can receive it directly to their inbox, by going to their newsletter preferences or adding their email to the sign-up box in this article.
With all the recent reports of Italy tightening or changing its rules on citizenship, many people are asking why this has apparently become such a focus for the government now.
As readers have pointed out, further limiting citizenship rights seems like an odd thing to do for a country facing the steepest population decline in Europe. Why wouldn't a country in this situation make it easier for people of working age to move there, and stay there?
Italy famously has long-standing problems with a declining birth rate and an ongoing exodus of educated young people. Some estimates suggest Italy could lose half of its current population by the end of the century.
Meanwhile many people who want to move to Italy to live and work find that they can't meet the visa requirements to do so.
We hear again and again from Italian commentators and political leaders (as well as the influential pro-life lobby) that Italy needs more young people, or else there will be no one left to pay taxes. As an argument for starting a family though, it’s not especially persuasive.
And there’s not much being done to change the situation.
The current Italian government, like so many before it, has done very little to improve support for families with young children in the current economic climate. As a woman who had a baby in Italy just a few months ago, I find political discourse on the topic of the birth rate feels detached from reality.
So if there’s a lack of political will to make it easier for Italians to have kids, there’s really only one other way to create more Italians: make it easier for more people to obtain Italian citizenship.
The upcoming June referendum is hoped to do just that, by easing rules on obtaining citizenship through naturalisation, also known as the residency route.
For the many people who move to Italy and make it their home, this is the usual route to obtaining citizenship, but it’s a lengthy process. Applicants have to prove 10 years of "continuous" legal residency, then wait up to three years for their claim to be approved, as well as meeting minimum income and other requirements.
The vote asks whether Italy should cut the waiting time down from 10 years to five. As Italy’s rules on naturalisation are among the toughest in Europe, that still wouldn’t make the process particularly lax.
READ ALSO: How will Italy’s referendum on easing citizenship rules work?
We have seen enormous interest in the vote at The Local, and we know this means a lot to many readers who live here.
They aren’t the only group who stand to benefit. The many thousands of 'new Italians' – young people born in Italy to non-Italian parents, who are not eligible for Italian citizenship and can only apply at the age of 18 under certain conditions – are also hoping the change would make things easier for them.
In fact, conservative estimates say that some 1.4 million people would benefit from the rule change. Other calculations put the figure even higher, at some 2.5 million.
And yet, the government strongly opposes the referendum proposal to make it easier to obtain citizenship via residency.
Perhaps this isn't surprising, considering that they’ve just forced through tight new restrictions on applying for citizenship by descent, leaving a large number of would-be applicants "angry" and "heartbroken".
But it might seem contradictory at first glance that Italy is holding a vote on easing citizenship through naturalisation only a few short weeks later.
The timing is coincidental, but the two proposals came from opposite sides of the chamber. The latter change was forced through by the ruling hard-right coalition, while the former was proposed by left-wing opposition parties in parliament.
In fact, the government is so against relaxing the rules on becoming Italian that senior members have been open about their desire to sabotage the referendum, with all three ruling parties running a campaign to tell people to stay home on polling day. Which seems slightly unnecessary in a country where increasingly few voters bother to turn out for referendums at all.
Turnout is expected to be so low that the referendum results could be declared invalid, whatever they turn out to be. Voter participation needs to hit 50 percent, which Italian media analysis suggests is unlikely to happen this time.
As our deputy editor Giampietro wrote in last week’s newsletter, the government’s real aim in denigrating the vote is more likely to be to stifle debate on an issue that badly needs an airing.
This anti-voting stance is at least keeping the topic in the media spotlight, and more public discussion has to be a good thing.
Although some polls have found that around half of the electorate would be in favour of the reform, the truth is that this hasn’t been a hot button topic for most Italian voters, and clearly the ruling parties want it to stay that way.
For what it’s worth, I will be casting my first vote as an Italian citizen (I got my citizenship earlier this year) in favour of making it easier for more people to obtain the same rights.
And if you’re eligible to vote in Italian elections, we’ve written a guide to how to do it here.
Inside Italy is our weekly look at some of the news and talking points in Italy that you might not have heard about. It’s published each Saturday and members can receive it directly to their inbox by going to their newsletter preferences or adding their email to the sign-up box in this article.
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