Speech at the Senate of the Republic
Good morning to you all, and thank you for taking part in this important gathering here at the Senate.
I firmly believe that addressing today the issue of young people within this Institution entails assuming a responsibility that cannot be reduced merely to the dimension of a sectoral policy or to the concerns of a particular age group, but rather one that directly concerns the very capacity of the Republic to remain faithful to its constitutional foundations and to preserve, over time, the solidity of its democratic system itself; because a liberal democracy such as ours, in which a significant portion of the younger generations is unable to perceive formally recognised rights as effective material conditions of autonomy, stability, and participation, is a liberal democracy that progressively loses credibility, cohesion, and long-term perspective. And this is something we simply cannot afford.
And if we wish to be fully honest — and I believe that intellectual honesty within this Chamber is a duty even before it is a virtue — we must acknowledge that this gap between formal rights and substantive rights today represents the principal fracture upon which the credibility of the State itself is measured, not only in light of our Constitution, but also in light of the European legal order, which, through the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union, rendered legally binding by Article 6 of the Treaty on European Union, establishes precise and non-derogable standards, beginning with Article 1 on human dignity, Article 14 on the right to education, Article 15 on the freedom to choose and pursue an occupation, Article 21 on the prohibition of discrimination, Article 31 on fair and just working conditions, and Article 34 on social security and social assistance, thereby outlining a framework in which the responsibility of Member States is not merely political, but legal and systemic in nature.
At present, Parliament is still engaged in discussions concerning the Budget Law, which, as has increasingly been the case over recent years, operates within a framework primarily aimed at safeguarding public finances, yet continues to distribute limited resources broadly and diffusely according to a logic which, while responding to a principle of formal equity, remains incapable of addressing the structural obstacles preventing the country from growing, increasing productivity, and building solid prospects for its citizens; and this approach, which tends to “give a little to everyone,” inevitably ends up changing the condition of no one in any substantial way, producing only limited and temporary effects while failing to tackle the underlying causes of economic and social stagnation.
And this is no longer sustainable — not economically, not socially, but above all not democratically — because continuing to fragment resources without establishing a clear hierarchy of priorities ultimately means renouncing the governance of transformative processes and accepting instead an inertial management of decline, in contradiction not only with Article 3 of the Treaty on European Union, which identifies balanced economic growth and full employment among the Union’s objectives, but also with the country-specific recommendations issued within the framework of the European Semester, which clearly urge Italy to concentrate investment on human capital, innovation, and productivity.
I furthermore believe that a country with limited resources must make selective choices, concentrating intervention on those pillars that truly determine development — namely education, wages, and healthcare — because it is along these three axes that the concrete possibility for individuals to live, work, and plan their future within the national community is ultimately constructed.
And this is not an ideological position; rather, it is a position grounded in evidence, empirical data, and in what demonstrably functions in the countries that achieve the highest and most sustainable levels of growth, and it is entirely consistent with our constitutional framework, beginning with Article 9, which links development and culture, and Article 41, which subjects economic initiative to its social utility, thereby reminding us of a conception of the market that is never an end in itself, but rather an instrument of collective progress.
It is precisely at the intersection of these three dimensions that the condition of young people emerges with greatest clarity, for today they represent not merely a political priority, but the clearest indicator of the distance between the principles enshrined in our Constitutional Charter and their concrete implementation, beginning with Article 3, which requires the Republic to remove the economic and social obstacles limiting substantive equality, Article 4, which recognises the right to work as the foundation of participation in the life of the nation, Article 36, which guarantees remuneration sufficient to ensure a free and dignified existence, Article 47, which commits the State to facilitating access to home ownership, and Article 32, which protects health as a fundamental right of the individual and an interest of the community, thereby outlining a model of citizenship that cannot remain confined to the formal sphere but must necessarily translate into effective material conditions.
Alongside this constitutional framework stand Articles 24, 25, and 33 of the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union, which respectively concern the protection of children, the dignity of the elderly, and the reconciliation of family and professional life, thereby demonstrating how the issue of youth cannot be viewed in isolation, but rather as part of an intergenerational equilibrium that today appears profoundly compromised.
The data, in this respect, describe a reality that can neither be ignored nor softened, because young workers earn wages that are 24.7 per cent lower than those received by individuals between thirty and forty-nine years of age and 36.4 per cent lower than those of workers over fifty, while 71 per cent of individuals under the age of thirty-five still live with their parents, revealing a structural difficulty in achieving housing independence within a context characterised by inadequate salaries, employment precarity, and continuously rising housing costs; and this condition directly affects life choices, as demonstrated by the average age at the birth of a first child, which now stands at 31.8 years — the highest in Europe — with profound demographic, economic, and social implications.
And these figures are not mere statistics: they are suspended lives, postponed choices, compressed talents, energies that fail to find adequate space and recognition; and every time this occurs, the State is not merely failing in the implementation of a public policy, but is failing to fulfil both a constitutional and a European obligation.
It is within this broader framework that I developed, in my book The Country of Missed Opportunities, the definition of Italy as the country of “almost”: a country endowed with widespread talent, intelligence, and creativity, yet one which too often proves incapable of transforming these qualities into concrete and lasting outcomes.
And if we analyse the condition of young people through this lens, it becomes immediately evident that they represent the clearest manifestation of this mechanism, because they are those who possess the greatest potential and yet those who suffer most acutely the consequences of its failure to materialise. It is precisely here that the credibility of our country is at stake, because a nation incapable of transforming the talent of its younger generations into real development is not merely losing economic opportunities; it is progressively weakening its own democratic and social structure.
To this must be added a phenomenon that represents one of the most critical challenges for the future of the country, namely youth emigration, because between 2022 and 2023 nearly one hundred thousand young people left Italy, attracted by contexts in which labour is more adequately remunerated, opportunities are more stable, and public systems provide stronger guarantees, thereby causing a significant loss of human capital and a reduction in the country’s capacity to innovate, grow, and compete internationally.
And here lies the decisive point: the freedom of movement guaranteed by Article 45 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union is undoubtedly an achievement, but when mobility becomes a necessity rather than a choice — when it is determined not by the search for experience but by the absence of opportunities — it ceases to be a sign of integration and instead becomes an indicator of imbalance.
And this entire picture inevitably unfolds within a global context characterised by growing instability, because according to United Nations data there are currently more than one hundred conflicts of varying nature taking place across the world, and in a historical phase marked by geopolitical tensions, economic transformations, and competition between systems, the resilience of democracies increasingly depends upon their capacity to guarantee participation and prospects to younger generations.
Then there arises the issue of voting rights, which cannot be treated as a merely formal or bureaucratic matter, but rather as a living component of democratic participation, especially within the present context. Because voting constitutes the highest expression of citizenship, yet it loses its strength if it cannot effectively be exercised by all. We witnessed this recently in the debate concerning voting rights for students and workers residing away from their municipalities during the latest referendum, because when a right exists in theory but not in practice, the very substance of democracy itself begins to fracture.
And similarly with regard to electoral participation, the detachment of young people does not stem from indifference, but rather from a perception of distance from decision-making processes. The issue, therefore, is not merely participation itself, but the ability to genuinely matter within the democratic process.
Within this perspective, adopting an anthropologically, historically, and methodologically grounded vision, one may recall that already during the Augustan age the figure of the patron served as a bridge between power and society, between institutions and the dissemination of civic values. Today, that bridge must be rebuilt, because a democracy that fails to place young people in the conditions to exert real influence is a democracy that progressively loses strength, relevance, and future.
And it is precisely in this direction that we must work more decisively toward a shared commitment among politics, enterprises, and institutions aimed at significantly increasing the wages of young people, identifying the threshold of thirty thousand euros annually as the minimum level necessary to guarantee genuine economic and housing autonomy, while establishing an “Under-35 Wages Fund” endowed with approximately three billion euros annually, intended to support a system of progressive reductions in social contributions capable of increasing wages without simultaneously increasing labour costs for businesses.
This proposal, entirely consistent with Article 107 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union concerning State aid, constitutes a targeted, selective, temporary, and verifiable intervention — precisely the opposite of the generalised measures that have characterised too many seasons of economic policymaking. More specifically, its implementation would take legislative form through amendments to Bill No. 1689 and Presidential Decree No. 917 of 22 December 1986, introducing a preferential tax regime for incomes up to twenty thousand euros for individuals under thirty-five, together with a system of incentives operating progressively across the entire wage scale, applicable to new permanent employment contracts and to the conversion of temporary contracts into permanent ones, including exemptions from INAIL contributions above twenty thousand euros, progressive reductions in INPS contributions, and a maximum duration of forty-eight months for the benefit, reserved for young people who have never previously held stable employment.
And this measure is directly connected to the housing issue, because without adequate income there can be no effective access to housing, and without housing there can be no stability, thereby making evident how the implementation of Article 47 of the Constitution requires an integrated approach capable of combining labour, income, and access to credit.
Alongside these elements, however, there exists another pillar which represents an indispensable condition for any credible perspective of the future: the healthcare system. Because without healthcare there can be no security, without security there can be no trust, and without trust there can be no possibility of building a stable life project within the country; and this directly affects the choices of younger generations, who increasingly evaluate the quality of public services as a determining factor in their personal and professional decisions.
For this reason, I consider it necessary to significantly strengthen the financing of the national healthcare system, as provided for in Amendment No. 70.3 to Bill No. 1689, which substantially increases the resources allocated to the sector, bringing them to 1.25 billion euros for 2026 and 1.35 billion euros annually beginning in 2027; and at the same time, I believe it is essential to enhance the status of healthcare personnel, particularly those working within emergency services, through the establishment of a dedicated fund for salary increases designed to encourage access to specialist training pathways, thereby recognising the central role of these professionals in ensuring the resilience of the healthcare system itself.
And indeed, everything I have spoken about today does not merely concern an increase in public expenditure; rather, it concerns a direct investment in the quality of life of the country itself: in its social cohesion, in its capacity to maintain solidarity between generations, and above all in the concrete possibility of preventing the loss of its younger generations. At its core, it is a simple yet decisive idea of national development.
Without a solid healthcare system, without education, without dignified work, there can be no possible future.
And a country that fails to build a future for its young people inevitably compels them to seek one elsewhere.
If we truly wish to strengthen our democracy, we must possess the courage — and I mean genuine courage — to abandon the logic of marginal and fragmented interventions and finally undertake selective, clear, and measurable decisions. Because democracy is not defended through declarations of principle: it is defended by making real the rights it proclaims.
And today this responsibility falls above all toward the younger generations.
The proposals I have outlined move precisely in this direction: not mere corrective adjustments, but a systemic choice. A choice concerning the model of country we aspire to be, our capacity to grow, innovate, and remain competitive within a world that waits for no one.
And therefore the question is this — and it is a political question in the highest sense of the term: do we wish to be a country capable of retaining its young people and placing them in the conditions to build their future here, or a country resigned to watching them leave?
Thank you very much.
