“We will continue with the progressivity. The reform reduces the income tax scales, seeking to improve the conditions of those in the first category,” said Meloni. / Photo: AFP
Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni defended this Friday before the country’s main union her new tax reform, which seeks to reduce income tax categories, while justifying the removal of the social plan known as “citizenship income” when considering that this type of tools “favors irregular work”.
“Merit is the only social elevator that exists if it is accompanied by equal starting conditions,” Meloni stated when participating in the northern city of Rimini of the congress with which the Italian General Confederation of Labor re-elected its secretary general Maurizio Landini for another four years, in what was the first visit by a premier to the event since Romano Prodi’s in 1996.
Throughout almost an hour of speech, the prime minister of the far-right government, in office since October, defended the tax reform approved on Thursday that seeks a “flat tax” fixed tax for large incomes three years from now and with which he aspires to “reduce the tax burden” for workers.
“We will continue with progressivity. The reform reduces the income tax scales, seeking to improve the conditions of those in the first category,” explained Meloni, the first female premier in the country’s history.
The reform also provides for a review of the four tax rates of the IVA in force and a proposal to reduce it to zero in some essential items such as bread, pasta and milk.
For Meloni, the universal basic salary as well as citizenship income “favors irregular work”./ Photo: AFP
Elimination of social plans
In her speech, Meloni also defended the elimination of the social plan more widespread in Italy, the so-called “citizenship income” (income from citizenship), a universal basic salary that reached up to 800 euros for the unemployed and underemployed, and that now only people qualified as unfit for work will receive.
“The program did not benefit those who can work, since it has served to keep them in poverty and we want to offer them a way out of that condition. The only way I know of for that is work,” he argued.
For Meloni, the universal basic salary as well as the citizenship income “favors irregular work.”
“I do not believe that those who are able to work should be supported by the state with the taxes paid by those who work and sometimes earn only a little more than those who do not,” he said when defending the elimination of the measure that the Government of Giuseppe Conte had introduced. in 2018.
In her speech, Meloni asked the unions to focus on job creation since “wealth is created by companies and workers.”
“The challenge is to put companies and workers in the best condition to create wealth that will inevitably fall on everyone,” he argued, in an implicit defense of the so-called “Spill Theory”.
“Italy is the only country in the UE that it has lower salaries than before 1990. It means that there is an emergency and that the recipes used until now have not worked and it is necessary to imagine a new path. That path that has not been taken until now is to bet everything on economic growth,” he proposed.
“I’m not afraid of being whistled at, I don’t run away from difficult contexts, they don’t scare me,” said the Prime Minister. / Photo: AFP
Wages
Meloni also rejected another of the union and opposition requests, such as the imposition of a national minimum wage.
“The introduction of the legal minimum wage is not the way: I fear that setting it by law will not become an added protection to the guarantees of the collective agreements that already exist, but a tool that would replace them by doing a favor to those who want to negotiate at the bottom the rights of the workers”, he deepened.
After criticism from the most radicalized sectors of the CGIL during the week in the presence of the premiere, Meloni stated that his attendance at the national congress of the central was due to a gesture for “unity”.
“I’m not afraid of being whistled at, I don’t run away from difficult contexts, they don’t scare me. The reason why I decided to come is because it’s not a day like others, it’s the national unity party. My presence not only seeks to fill the emptiness that 27 years ago there was no head of government,” he mentioned.
For Meloni, “the Italian data is below the European average in employment, female employment, and wages.”
For Landini, the presence of Meloni in the meeting historically characterized as left-wing, in which authorities of the Vatican and of the Italian Church “is an element of respect and recognition of our union that represents millions of people”, in reference to the almost 6 million affiliates that the union center has.
