“The serious problem is that we are starting to have an emigration problem, meaning people leaving this country because it offers them no opportunities.” This is the alarm raised by Giovanni Maria Zonzini (RETE) during the communications session of the Grand and General Council (Consiglio Grande e Generale). The councillor urged against triumphalism over the Agreement with the European Union, drawing attention instead to the loss of purchasing power, soaring rents, inequality and the struggles of the public healthcare system.
The full remarks of Giovanni Maria Zonzini (RETE)
I too join the chorus of hallelujahs. For goodness’ sake, I’m glad we’ve reached the point of signing, but I believe that the condition of our country, and indeed of Europe itself at this moment, leaves no room for easy triumphalism — which in fact seems rather out of place.
Many European countries are, in a sense, on fire right now. Autumn is shaping up to be a hot one, not just in climate terms — something we should by now be used to — but evidently also politically.
Tensions are running extremely high, and the grievances stirring people in France, Spain, Italy and even Belgium — and we’ll see where this contagion spreads next — are not so different from the difficulties we ourselves are experiencing.
While reactionary forces across Europe call for an iron fist and, from their point of view, more effective repressive tools to quell these protests, in our own country — where we don’t have street violence or such demonstrations — these phenomena should still concern us and push us to defend, within our borders, an idea of democracy that is increasingly endangered by the rise of the far right and of authoritarian, reactionary impulses.
Coming to the substance of the malaise felt across the continent, and in San Marino too, we cannot ignore certain facts.
The fact is that over the past ten years we have witnessed a progressive and growing impoverishment of a large part of the population, particularly salaried workers, who have seen the purchasing power of their wages eroded.
Sticking to San Marino’s figures, just these past few days I compiled a small statistical comparison, which I also published, comparing the trend of the consumer price index for households of blue- and white-collar workers against the trend in average territorial wages.
Clearly this indicator isn’t perfectly precise, but it is nonetheless telling. And indeed, we observe that by the end of 2025 there had been a loss of purchasing power of at least 5%.
Moreover, the average territorial wage is calculated on industrial sector salaries, which are also the ones where — perhaps thanks to a stronger union presence — the loss of purchasing power has been more contained.
So we’re talking about a 5% loss by the end of 2025, which is being further aggravated in these very last months by the general rise in inflation and, in particular, by rising fuel prices.
All of this is clearly putting a severe strain on family budgets.
Against this widespread cost-of-living crisis, and the ongoing erosion of wages in San Marino — and not only in San Marino — stands an explosion in rental income, first and foremost property rents.
Indeed, while the cost of living in San Marino has risen on average by around 25% over the past ten years, the cost of rents had risen by at least 35% by the end of 2025. And in my view these figures are, in many respects, even underestimated.
So we see not only that workers and salaried people in general have lost purchasing power over the past decade, but also that those among them who are not fortunate enough to own their own home — perhaps because their family left it to them, because they inherited it, or for whatever other reason — are living in an absolutely dire situation.
A situation that is pushing more and more families, especially young ones, to leave our country — a country where they were born and where, in many cases, they continue to work, simply because living in San Marino is now beyond their economic reach.
On this point, allow me a wry remark. Certain press outlets make a great fuss over the bogeyman of the European Union and immigration, over hordes of migrants supposedly about to land somehow in San Marino, perhaps sailing up the Marecchia or the Ausa to reach our borders.
The serious problem, ladies and gentlemen, is that we are starting to have an emigration problem — people leaving this country because it offers them no opportunities, or even people leaving because they cannot find a home to live in at a price compatible with the salaries being paid here.
Faced with this situation, I see a certain paralysis in practice. I see paralysis because there is no capacity — or, in my view, perhaps no willingness — on the part of the majority and the government to carry out a materialist analysis of the situation.
That is, an analysis that acknowledges that the positive economic moment our Republic has experienced in recent years — because if we look at GDP figures and industrial output, the data are indeed encouraging — has in reality translated into increased wealth for a narrow group of citizens, while the wages and purchasing power of the majority of citizens and workers in this country have eroded.
In other words, in recent years we have witnessed rising inequality. We don’t have precise figures, since San Marino doesn’t calculate a Gini index, so we cannot give a precise definition of this growing inequality, but it is evident that there are clear indicators.
One of these, for example, is access to public services. Earlier, colleague Menicucci correctly noted that recourse to private healthcare is growing ever wider, because public healthcare no longer guarantees services within reasonable timeframes or, in some cases, does not guarantee them at all.
This is not a neutral fact. Of course, someone will say it’s RETE’s fault, because for a year and a half, during the pandemic, we ran the ISS (the state health institute). Perhaps we’re so skilled that we managed, on our own, to cause a situation that others have governed for decades — but that’s not the point.
I don’t even want to make this a question of political responsibility; I want to make it a question of social justice.
Look at the figures on the Statistics Office website, look at how much money is being spent and how much the turnover of private healthcare is growing. That will give you a number. Compared to 2022, according to 2025 data, private healthcare turnover has grown by 40%.
Now, I’m not against an economic sector growing and developing. But I ask myself: has this sector developed because it has innovated, because it attracts clients from abroad — or has it developed, or is it developing, by exploiting the shortcomings of public healthcare?
This, in my view, would be a question worth raising — just as it would be worth raising, and I repeat this, the fact that many people can no longer afford to live here because rents are too high relative to wages.
And mind you, this is not merely a right being trampled on — a materialist analysis of reality also suggests something else: that rental income is devouring wages.
This circumstance not only increases social and economic inequality within the country — since those who own property to rent out clearly see their wealth grow, while that of those who live on a salary shrinks at the same time — but it also produces a negative effect on the economy.
Because, mark my words, it would be far better if profits increased, since profits stem from productive activity, whereas this kind of rental income represents a zero-sum game.
It’s very simple: I raise the rent by 300 euros and I effectively reduce disposable wages by 300 euros. It’s an absolutely zero-sum game, one that is harmful to the economy and harmful to society.
So, colleagues, coming back to the question of the European Union: the Agreement is important, it is a historic step for this country, but let’s try not to fly too high, for two reasons.
The first is obvious, and you have all said it, as did Their Excellencies in their inaugural address: the signing of the Agreement is a starting point, because the Agreement itself is a fairly neutral factor, aside from its political recognition.
But then, in order to seize the opportunities that the Association Agreement could bring to our country, it will need to be implemented, putting into concrete practice the possibilities it offers. And here, indeed, it seems to me there’s a bit of fog hanging over the government’s intentions, as the saying goes.
The other reason is that, while we implement the Agreement and talk about the future, we must keep our feet on the ground and remember that over recent years most of our citizens — not all, but most — have become poorer, and therefore also angrier.
I think this is an element not to be underestimated. We are, at this moment, sitting on a social pressure cooker, so to speak, which could explode.
Let’s hope not, but at the same time, perhaps a bit of conflict would actually do some good. A bit of social friction might also do the government some good, to push it to get moving.
