6 days ago
Italians to vote on easing citizenship rules amid low turnout fears
Italians will begin voting on Sunday in a referendum on whether to relax citizenship laws, but there are fears that turnout will be so low that it will invalidate the result.
The two-day referendum, ending on Monday, will also ask voters if they agree with reversing a decade-old liberalisation of the labour market.
The labour market questions aim to make it more difficult to dismiss some employees and increase compensation for workers who are made redundant by small businesses, reversing a law passed by a Democratic Party (PD) government around a decade ago.
But it's the question about citizenship which has attracted the most attention among Italian voters.
Concerns about the scale of immigration helped push Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni's far-right Brothers of Italy party to power in 2022.
Italians will be asked if they support the idea of reducing the period of residence required to apply for Italian citizenship from 10 years to five.
Organisers of the referendum say that, if passed, it could affect around 2.5 million foreign nationals in Italy.
Italy's birth rate is in steep decline, and economists say the country needs more foreigners to boost its stagnant economy.
For foreigners in Italy, the primary channel to citizenship is through naturalisation, which can occur after 10 years of continuous residence in the country.
The applicant must also demonstrate that they have integrated into society, possess a minimum income, have a clean criminal record, and can speak Italian adequately.
The residence prerequisite is considerably shorter for citizens of other EU member states, who have to wait just four years to apply.
Riccardo Magi, secretary of the liberal Più Europa party, supports decreasing the length of time required to apply for citizenship.
He calls the current rules "old and unjust" and says they have only been in force for so long because successive governments have lacked the political will for change.
Magi thinks the referendum proposal is reasonable because it only reduces the residence time requirement while leaving the other requirements unchanged.
He says the current law "forces hundreds of thousands of girls and boys born or raised in Italy to live as foreigners in what is also their country."
Magi also believes the amendment would have indirect positive effects on many of these minors born or resident in Italy, to whom citizenship would be passed on by at least one New Italian parent.
"Those are who are rooted, work, pay taxes, study... must be able to vote and participate in public votes. This is the liberal idea of citizenship," he said.
But the Noi Moderati party has said its position on the referendum is a resounding no, the centrist party's vice-president Maria Chiara Fazio told Euronews.
"Citizenship is the deepest link between the state and the individual," Fazio stressed.
"It cannot be the subject of a referendum simplification: it is a topic that requires in-depth study, mutual listening and a serious parliamentary debate."
Fazio defended the structure of the current law, but acknowledged some bureaucratic aspects need to be tightened up as they leave many candidates in limbo.
But the Noi Moderati's position on the referendum is not unusual. The leaders of two of the coalition parties, Antonio Tajani of Forza Italia and Matteo Salvini of Lega or the League, have both said they will not vote on Sunday.
Meloni will attend a polling station but will also not cast a ballot.
That indifference to the referendum appears to have trickled down to regular voters too. A Demopolis institute poll carried out in May estimated turnout to be between 31% and 39%, well short of the threshold required to make the result binding.
The leader of the opposition Conservative Party, Kemi Badenoch, has indicated that a US-style blanket travel ban on foreign citizens could be "viable" in the United Kingdom, stressing that it should no longer be the "world's softest touch."
The Leader of the Opposition said on Friday that Britain is being "mugged" by illegal migration, local media reported.
She added "parliament needs to be able to decide who comes into the country, for how long and who needs to leave," explaining that this can be done through measures such as travel bans.
"There are scenarios where this is viable."
In a resurrection of his controversial first term "Muslim ban", Trump on Wednesday announced travel bans to the United States for citizens from 12 countries he has deemed "out of control."
It will apply to people from Afghanistan, Myanmar, Chad, the Republic of Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Haiti, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Yemen.
The ban is set to go into effect on Monday and will bar nationals from these countries from entering the US unless they qualify for an exemption.
Travel restrictions will also come into force for citizens of a further seven countries on the same day.
However, Badenoch then went on to say she didn't fully support a Trump-style ban for the UK, adding that she hadn't seen which countries were affected.
"That doesn't mean that I agree with what Donald Trump has done. I'm much more focused on…what's happening here."
Badenoch made the remarks after a speech at the Royal United Services Institute in Westminster in which she launched a commission tasked with analysing leaving the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR).
The international human rights treaty between the 47 states which are members of the Council of Europe (CoE) protects the basic rights and freedoms of people.
She argued that the UK had "lost control of the asylum system" and is "being blocked".
Referring to the ECHR, she vowed to crackdown on "lawfare" which she said is obstructing border control and is used to stop migrant deportations.
'I have always said that if we need to leave the convention we should and having now considered the question closely I do believe that we will likely need to leave because I am yet to see a clear and coherent way to fix this within our current legal structures."
Badenoch has enlisted a senior barrister to review the legalities surrounding the a potential UK withdrawal from the ECHR.
The senior lawyer is expected to provide his report at the Tory party conference later this year, at which point the Tory leader will make a final decision on the ECHR "problem." However, she stressed she would not do so without a clear plan.
Leader of the far-right Reform UK party, Nigel Farage, stated earlier this year that the first thing he would do as Prime Minister would be to withdraw the UK from the ECHR.
Meanwhile, the current Labour government has ruled out leaving it.
Last month, nine EU countries signed an open letter calling for the ECHR to be reinterpreted to allow for policy changes on migration. The signatories, who believe it should be easier to expel migrants who commit crimes, said the ECHR's interpretation of the convention should be examined.
The CoE's Secretary Alain Berset criticised their politicising of the court.
