A "great battle" is needed to defend
the family, which means "defending identity, defending God and
all the things that our civilisation is built upon", Premier
Giorgia Meloni said at the Budapest Demographic Summit in
Hungary on Thursday. Meloni told participants that supporting
families and reversing the declining birth rate in Italy are
absolute priorities of her right-centre government, in order
that "the future might be better than the present". "Population
decline is not a destiny, it is a choice," said the premier,
adding that "it is not the choice we are looking at". Meloni
said resources must be mobilised to support the family "as it
is", citing Hungary as "a perfect example". "Hungary shows that
things can change if we have the courage to make the necessary
choices and investments," she continued. "In Hungary, the
declining trend in the birth rate has been halted, jobs have
increased, and so has the employment of women," she insisted.
Instead, Meloni said migration is not the solution to the
demographic decline. "It is often instrumentally claimed that
migration will contribute to the growth of our populations. I do
not agree with this narrative," she said. "I am convinced that
great nations must take responsibility for building their own
future," she continued. "Migrants, if fully integrated, can make
a contribution, but we have to take greater responsibility for
ourselves, as European citizens, finding solutions to the crises
of the European system," added Meloni. In April national
statistics agency Istat said that there were less than seven
births and more than 12 deaths for every 1,000 inhabitants in
Italy in 2022, when births fell below the 400,000 mark for the
first time since the unification of Italy, standing at 393,000.
The premier has made reversing this trend a battle horse, and in
May she told a conference on Italy's declining birthrate also
attended by Pope Francis that talking about natality, motherhood
and families feels like a "revolutionary act". "We believe that
the task of the state is to create favorable conditions, within
the regulatory environment and above all on the cultural level,
for families, for initiative, for development, for work," she
said. "We want a state that accompanies and does not direct, we
want to believe in people, to bet on Italians, on young people,
on their hunger for the future," she added.
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