As its leader Giuseppe Conte has long explained, M5S aims to create a regional citizen’s income. The presentation of the template for this measure took place in Campania, with a draft law following months of propaganda that began last summer. Given that the European elections were approaching, it was inevitable that things would speed up. What does this regional citizenship income consist of? To support the so-called “employable”.

But let’s start from the national regulatory framework of reference. Since January, the citizen’s income, in force from April 2019 to December 2023, has been replaced by two different institutions: Participation Allowance and Education and Work Support.

Participation allowance, by design, relates to the field of social policy. It covers situations of socioeconomic hardship and those furthest away from the labor market and is recognized for families with at least one member in one of the following conditions:

• disabled;
• underage;
• at least 60 years old;
• Persons who are disadvantaged and included in the care and assistance program of local social and health services approved by the public administration.

Access to the measure is determined by the family parity scale and income and ISEE thresholds.

Support for education and work, on the other hand, is designed to manage the number of so-called “employable” people, but it raises many critical issues analyzed and commented on here by Luigi Oliveri. This is therefore a measure that, with all the critical issues arising from its design, is also theoretically relevant to active labor policies through training, qualification and retraining, and to the economic contexts in which they are implemented. These generally belong to fertile desertified regions.

Education and employment support is available to individual members of family units aged between 18 and 59 whose family ISEE value does not exceed 6,000 euros per year and who do not meet the conditions for accessing the participation allowance.

Regional citizenship income

M5S’s Campanian proposal targets precisely the “employable” pool, which is estimated to number 250 thousand people in families consisting of individuals between the ages of 18 and 59 who can be activated for work. It is divided into three steps: access (information, advice and guidance), assistance and active participation. The guaranteed regional allowance is 400 euros per person per month for the first twelve months; to this is added 200 euros for each member of the family unit after the second month. In addition to the ISEE threshold being increased from 6,000 euros to 9,360 euros, it is the second phase, according to advocates, that distinguishes the five-star offer from the government offer, which only provides study and work support for twelve months. so-called active participation. It extends the support measure up to 36 months with 400 euros per person per month and has a plus.

This detail is explained by five-star regional councilor Gennaro Saiello, the first signatory of the regional bill: “In the second phase, which is the heart of our proposal, the Campania Region requires memoranda of understanding with business representative organizations in order to conduct a survey on the professional needs of the Campania business community. Recipients “The companies are then included in a regional pathway for active participation, adhering to the memorandum of understanding. At this stage, support from the Region continues and a fee is added, paid by the Company and varying according to the type of contract envisaged”.

So let’s see: In the second stage, companies step in and determine their “professional needs”. For this awareness operation, companies must pay part of the subsidy to buyers in addition to the 400 euros from the public source.

I must admit that it is not clear to me (but I have not read the text of the regional legislative proposal) whether the beneficiaries involved in the company will receive a salary or only 400 euros per month, which is the public plus company contribution. If this were the case, there would theoretically be a fairly small pay packet even for low-skilled individuals or those who have completed the qualification or requalification process. Some may conclude that the minimum hourly wage should be at least 9 euros (otherwise “this is not education, but exploitation”), which would negate the benefit of companies having rather low-skilled workers on their staff.

There is always the mythological “discovery” of perhaps unconscious institutional needs and requirements that seems like a truly Sisyphean effort. It is unclear whether the regional subsidy will replace or be added to the national subsidy, and even how overlapping educational pathways will be managed. In my opinion, the overriding consideration here is the aim of increasing the subsidy payment period to at least 36 months, rather than just the twelve-month national programme, and covering this with a training course of appropriate length.

What happens in less than a year?

But the issue is not a trivial one: Meloni’s government will have to decide what to do when the first twelve months of support expire to avoid social tensions and jumps in poverty statistics. And here we return to the main national problem: how to promote the employment of people who are far from the labor market and find themselves in economically deserted regions or in the process of desertification, where the informal sector (i.e. unregistered employment) is concerned. sector) softens the concept of legality by touching the Middle East-South America levels.

This is not an illusion of the Five Star Movement, but an objective situation even of a large part of the national territory. I therefore make an easy prophecy in saying that I expect the Meloni government will have to repeat this in some form upon the expiration of the first twelve months of education and work support. With all due respect to the abundance of “savings” that the right wing promoted during the election campaign.

But now let’s come to the main problem of the Five Star Movement’s proposal in Campania, the “model” for “conquering” votes and territories, especially in certain parts of the country: money, coverage. Supporters believe they have allocated around 200 million euros from the regional budget, but they admit these are insufficient funds. Therefore, the proposal “commits the Region to a careful exploration of all the resources at its disposal, including those derived from national and European financial resources (European Structural Funds and Goals Programme)”.

What could go wrong?

So let’s see: we will use European funds and national funds to pay for the regional subsidy. Unless Palazzo Chigi is persuaded to raise more money, it can be said that the blanket is too short. But frankly we don’t need to be naive about accounting: we need to send the message that the money would be there if there was the political will. Vittorio Alfieri, step aside. You don’t need to be a political scientist to understand that this proposal, which is planned to become a national format, will serve first and foremost to put pressure on the Democratic Party while launching local candidacies and possibly forming alliances for the next party. legislature When will the concept of citizen’s income be put on the table and on the national platform intensively again?

I repeat: there is a problem of a drying up economy in large areas of the country, which strongly hinders efforts to keep the design of similar welfare mechanisms temporary and temporary. No government, not even Giorgia Meloni’s, will escape this evidence. But the Five Star Movement has difficulty resuming proposals for pure subsidies indefinitely under the guise of reactivation policies. Perhaps by finding permanent scope in the metaphysical extra profits made structural. The region called campo largo, which has moved from the announcement phase to the implementation phase, will have the opportunity to try the format in Sardinia, which is also a special status region, with the new governor Alessandra Todde. Right?

Since it seemed fashionable in Italy during this period to reimagine welfare in a reactionary sense (see BTP outside ISEE and apparently also the first house), five-star members quickly adapted. Words and music by five-star regional councilor Saiello: “[…] “The government considers those who own a house worth 150 thousand euros outside the scope of support, but for us there is no limitation on the first house.”

And free jet ski for the first thousand phone calls! What could go wrong?

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