Rome is dealing with authorized motion by the European Fee for allegedly discriminating towards EU residents who reside within the Mediterranean nation.
Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni slammed the European Fee’s infringement process towards Italy as “surreal,” setting the stage for an additional disagreement between Brussels and Rome.
Final week, the European Fee introduced it’s taking authorized motion towards Italy, accusing it of discriminating towards EU nationals who reside within the nation by making them ineligible for household advantages.
Below a regulation that got here into impact in 2022, employees who haven’t lived in Italy for at the least two years or whose kids aren’t registered as residents are excluded from these advantages.
Nevertheless, Italian lawmakers are rejecting the accusations from Brussels, questioning its authority over the difficulty.
“That is one thing that nearly falls outdoors the union’s competencies,” Forza Italia MEP Flavio Tosi advised Euronews.
“Each nation has to return to phrases with out there assets. Italy is among the many international locations with the best debt within the EU, and we are able to’t evaluate ourselves to France, Germany, or different EU founding members that may afford to spend extra or incur extra debt”.
The Italian authorities has allotted a further €3 billion to assist its household advantages system, often called the “assegno unico”, or common allowance.
Meloni has emphasised that Italy can’t afford to speculate greater than what has already been allotted and that the measure is vital in her authorities’s efforts to deal with the nation’s declining delivery charge.
Regardless of Italy’s response to the Fee’s preliminary letter of formal discover final 12 months and a follow-up opinion, the EU maintains that the nation’s reply failed to deal with its considerations.
The case has now been despatched to the Court docket of Justice of the EU. The European Fee insists that one of many basic rules of the EU is that every one of its residents are handled equally throughout all member states, which means that Italy can’t create completely different insurance policies for EU residents and Italians on any matter of rights and privileges.
