Italian government wins confidence vote in House of Representatives The Italian government wins confidence vote in House of Representatives

The Italian government won a vote of confidence in the House of Representatives and, after sometimes chaotic negotiations, passed the 2023 budget law through the parliamentary chamber. On Friday evening, 221 MPs initially expressed their confidence in the right-wing government of Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, 152 were against. After an hour-long session on the individual points of the budget bill, which lasted until Saturday morning, 197 MPs finally voted in favor of the project and 129 rejected it. Now the law enters the Senate; it will be discussed in the second chamber from 27 December and adopted before the turn of the year.

It would be a great success for Meloni to complete the budget in 2022. In recent weeks and days there has been some violent unrest and opposition criticism of the procedure. The focus is on measures against the energy crisis, Meloni wants to help families and companies because of the increased prices.

One of the central points of contention was the government’s forced abolition of the “Reddito di Cittadinanza”, a state aid similar to citizens’ income or basic security. In 2023, this will only be paid for seven months for the unemployed. If you turn down a job, you lose it immediately. In the end, the negotiations turned to whether this job offer should be “appropriate” for the person’s qualifications or not.

In the days leading up to the vote, relatively minor measures woven into the budget law caused a stir: These included permission to shoot wild boars in cities or protected areas if authorities deemed it necessary for security reasons. In recent years, wild boars have gained a foothold in urban areas. In Rome, for example, whole gangs are reported time and time again running into inhabited areas and digging through the rubbish there. Accidents also happened. Critics accuse the government of wanting to use the measures to facilitate the hunting of other wild animals, such as wolves. (saw/sda/dpa)