The Italians began to vote on Sunday to say “yes” or “not” to a measure to facilitate the obtaining of nationality, as well as the abolition of laws that liberalize the labor market, to which the government required a capacity to invalidate the result of the vote.
Currently, a non -European resident without marriage or blood with Italy must live there for ten years before you can request naturalization, a process that can then take years. The proposal subject to the referendum proposes to reduce this period to five years, which would align Italy with Germany and France.
The supporters of the “yes” claim that up to 2.5 million people could benefit from this reform, backed by the Democratic Party (EP, Center-Left), the main opposition force.
The initiative of this referendum, of opposition parties and NGOs, collected more than 500,000 signatures in September, as required by law. But even if the “yes” prevails for the five proposals subject to referendum, Sunday and Monday, the participation must reach a minimum of 50%.
Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, head of the Fratelli Party of Italy (FDI, extreme right), who came to power in 2022 in an antimigrant program, even if his government has increased the number of work visas, “said this measure.
A fifth of European naturalizations
For Giorgia Meloni, the current nationality law is “excellent” and “very open.” “We are one of the European nations with the largest number of naturalizations,” he said this week.
According to Eurostat, Rome granted Italian nationality in 2023 to 213,500 people, a fifth of the naturalizations in the European Union. More than 90% of them were from countries outside the EU, mainly Albania and Morocco, as well as Argentina and Brazil.
In March, the government had limited access to naturalization by blood bond, making foreigners eligible only with Italian grandparents or parents, while before, the ancestry could return to the great -grandparents.
Giovanni Puccini, 18, voted on Sunday for the first time in his life, in an office in Rome. He believes that the call to the abstention of Giorgia Meloni is “disrespectful”: “We must vote because many people have fought, they are even dead, for this right.”
His friend, Pierre Donadio, 21, is convinced that it is necessary to soften the naturalization laws to “prevent the country from being closed on himself.” Very popular in the country, rapper Ghald, born in Milan of Tunisian parents, also urged his fans to vote.
Employee protection
The Italians are also asked to decide on a proposal to abolish four laws for liberalization of the labor market, a consultation sought by the CGIL Union (left), the main union confederation of the country, which also collected the 500,000 firms necessary for the celebration of the vote.
The union expects to restore protection measures against precarious contracts, dismissals and accidents at work that had been abolished in the past.
The Democratic Party supports this change, although it adopted when some of the measures proposed to the abolition was in power, some of which implemented by the former head of government Matteo Renzi. Currently, with 23% in the surveys, far behind Giorgia Meloni, which remains stable around 30%, the PD tries, with this new positioning, to recover part of the workers’ votes.
Source: BFM TV
