In a shocking blow to Europe’s socialist welfare culture, Italy’s newly-elected Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni plans to revoke financial benefits to Italians who refuse to find a job.
Nearly a month after taking office, Prime Minister Meloni presented her first annual budget that seeks to dismantle decades of misguided welfare policies.
“The changes announced Tuesday would knock eligible workers out of the system after eight months or after they refuse a job offer, and requires recipients to actually live in Italy,” The Associated Press reported.
Europe’s Welfare benefits are one of the main reasons behind surging illegal migration. The migrants are often poorly-educated and unemployable young men from the Middle East and North Africa.
Instead of funding the country’s wasteful welfare system, Meloni’s budget aims to boost Italy’s declining birth rates and help families cope with rising energy costs ahead of winter.
“Meloni presented the government’s first economic policy initiatives Tuesday, announcing 21 billion euros in budget tweaks that would be used to help industry and families cope with soaring energy prices, as well as measures to incentivize couples to have more children and businesses to hire more women,” The AP News added.
Meloni, who was much maligned by the mainstream media as “far-right” and outright “fascist,” appears to have allocated the country’s financial resources based on common sense policies.
“Italians who refuse job offers will lose their social benefits, the country’s hard-Right government announced, arguing that the country’s welfare system is too often abused,” the British newspaper Telegraph noted Tuesday.
The UK daily reported further:
Giorgia Meloni, Italy’s new prime minister, is to clamp down on a poverty relief scheme called the citizens’ income, arguing that it encourages idleness and has been widely abused, including by convicted mafia criminals.The initiative was introduced in 2019 by the Five Star Movement, a populist party that was part of a previous government but is now in opposition.More than 3.5 million Italians receive the €780 a month payment, with more than 2.3 million living in the struggling south of the country, including Sicily and Sardinia.Announcing her first budget, Ms Meloni said she would pare back the scheme, saying that it had reduced incentives for people to find jobs and that those able to work should no longer be eligible for the handout.They will be granted the welfare payment for a maximum of eight months next year, after which the whole system will be overhauled, starting in Jan 2024.“We’re keeping our pledges with respect to the citizens’ wage, which is a bad measure,” said Ms Meloni.“The State cannot put those who can and those who cannot work on the same level.” (…)Since the scheme started, there have been numerous cases of the minimum wage being claimed by people who have no right to it.In August, police in one part of Sicily arrested more than 100 people, including several with convictions for mafia-associated crimes, for fraudulently claiming the citizens’ income to the tune of €1.5 million.Earlier this month the finance police announced that while carrying out routine checks of yacht owners, they had found several who had been claiming the citizens’ wage, despite being wealthy.The Guardia di Finanza carried out the checks on boats cruising along the coast between Rome and Naples and discovered 13 individuals who had fraudulently pocketed the handout, including a company director.
Meloni is not only fixing the country’s welfare system, but she is also restoring sensible immigration and border regulations.
Her government has pledged to close the country’s ports to illegal migrant boats coming from north Africa. “Italy’s new right-wing government has vowed to stop the tens of thousands of migrants arriving on Italian shores each year,” the German state TV channel Deutsche Welle complained earlier this month.
Meloni’s stance has angered European and global elites committed to keeping Europe’s shores and borders open to mass migration.
The European and the United Nations issued statements condemning Rome for blocking illegal migrant boats swarming Italian ports, Deutsche Welle reported on November 7:
The UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) issued a statement appealing for all those onboard the blocked vessels to be allowed to disembark. “Those stranded need to be disembarked swiftly without any further delay. We call on states in the region to protect the lives of those rescued by ending the current impasse and offering a place of safety for disembarkation,” the UNHCR said.The European Commission highlighted the need to ensure international laws were being observed.”In line with international norms, every effort should be made to ensure that the time is minimized for the people remaining on board of these ships … we encourage all relevant authorities to cooperate with each other in providing a suitable place of safety for the people on board in order to ensure the disembarkation.”
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