Santi (Rete): «Fragmented measures and one-off incentives, we need a real national project»
This was one of the central political points in the speech given by Emanuele Santi (Rete) in the Grand and General Council (Consiglio Grande e Generale) during the examination of the bill on parenthood and measures to counter declining birth rates. While acknowledging some progress in terms of protections, Santi judged the measure insufficient and lacking a structural response on jobs, wages, housing and services, announcing the opposition’s abstention. Below is the full text of his address.
“The bill approved by the Fourth Standing Council Committee at its sitting of 8 May 2026, and today submitted for examination by the Grand and General Council, addresses one of the greatest structural emergencies facing our Republic: the demographic collapse and the ongoing, seemingly unstoppable decline in births. The data that emerged during the Committee’s discussions are stark and no longer allow for reassuring or convenient interpretations. Since the last positive natural balance we recorded back in 2016, our country has entered a phase of constant demographic decline: from 131 births in 2011, we went to 144 recorded in 2024 and 166 in 2025; current projections indicate the real possibility of dropping to just above 100 total annual births as early as 2026, marking an all-time historic low for our Republic. It is precisely against this alarming backdrop that the Government decided to put forward the current measure, amending a law already passed in 2022 that unfortunately failed to produce any of the hoped-for effects, in an attempt to make it more effective and to provide a response to the ongoing crisis, including through the transposition of the principles contained in European Directive 2019/1158 on work-life balance. However, the analysis of the discussions held in committee made it abundantly clear — including, I must say, from members of the majority parties themselves — that this measure is largely insufficient; the approach being pursued remains predominantly welfare-based and economic, founded on scattergun incentives that fail to structurally address the underlying causes of the birth-rate crisis and the real factors that today prevent our families from freely choosing to have children. As opposition forces, we have repeatedly pointed out that the problem of declining births cannot be tackled through fragmented measures or one-off incentives, but rather requires a genuine ‘national project,’ grounded in structural policies touching on employment, wages, the housing emergency and public services. During the Committee debate, it was repeatedly stressed that many young people today are giving up on starting a family not because of a lack of small, occasional or one-time financial contributions, but because they entirely lack the minimum conditions of stability and security they need: we are talking about wages increasingly eroded by inflation, growing job insecurity, difficulty accessing housing, and a cost of living that has become unsustainable for the majority of citizens. The loss of purchasing power of real wages, estimated at around 25-30% over the last decade, combined with the vertiginous rise in rents and the total absence of effective public housing policies, represents the true and principal obstacle to birth rates in our territory. In the absence of structural interventions on these fundamental pillars, the purely economic and welfare-based measures contained in this bill risk translating into marginal interventions, entirely incapable of reversing such a negative demographic trend. Furthermore, during the Committee’s work, it emerged unanimously that the ICEE tool — the indicator of economic condition — remains, incredibly, still unimplemented to this day, and that many of the measures envisaged in this text can only be fully and fairly implemented once this tool is actually up and running, as it is essential for calibrating and making fairer the distribution of state support. To this substantive criticism must be added a strong objection regarding the method followed by the Government throughout the entire legislative process. As opposition forces, we denounced the continuous last-minute filing of government amendments, often without any real prior consultation with the council minorities or with social stakeholders; this is a working method that made a thorough and serious examination of the articles extremely difficult, and which stifled at birth the kind of political consensus that a matter of such historic scope would necessarily have required. On the substance of the text, however, I acknowledge with a sense of responsibility that there are some positive elements. When concrete action is taken to increase protections and rights for workers, it is our duty to recognize it. Among the positive and expansive aspects to be highlighted are the introduction of greater economic protections for women workers, the provision of a minimum maternity allowance guaranteed even for unemployed women or those with part-time contracts, the doubling of paternity leave from 10 to 20 days, the formalization and institutionalization of the essential figure of the family caregiver, the increase in ordinary family allowances with automatic inflation adjustment starting from 2027, and the extension of the reduction in nursery school fees starting from the first child. However, alongside these partial improvements, deep-seated problems remain that prevent us from considering this measure an adequate and sufficient response to the severity of the situation. One of the points we have most strongly contested concerns the persistent disparity in treatment between employees and self-employed workers: despite a few minor adjustments, the system continues to configure a sort of second-class parenthood for self-employed professionals and workers, who remain without protections fully equal to those enjoyed by employees. Our proposed amendments to introduce genuine professional continuity and leave arrangements truly equivalent between the two categories were systematically rejected. Moreover, while we appreciate the extension of paternity leave to 20 days, we find it highly objectionable that a substantial part of this benefit is made conditional on prior agreement with the employer, risking turning a theoretically universal right into a tool that is extremely difficult to apply in practice, especially in the private sector. Similarly, the formalization of the family caregiver role represents a step forward on paper, but setting a limit of 50 qualifications per year and an overall spending cap of one million euros strikes us as a choice lacking any real statistical or planning basis, one that risks creating potentially discriminatory elements among applicants; as the opposition, we have also strongly objected to the provision requiring pensioners to give up their pension in order to access the economic benefits provided for caregivers. Another central political sticking point I want to highlight is the failure to implement the ICEE as a mandatory parameter to ensure social fairness. The majority’s choice to continue basing access to the measures provided for by the law exclusively on declared taxable income, rather than on the actual overall economic and asset situation of family units, risks perpetuating deep distributive injustices, ultimately favoring those who hold substantial assets but report formally modest incomes. Moreover, the Government’s real political will to move swiftly toward the full implementation of the ICEE tool remains entirely unclear; the minority has identified this ambiguity as one of the main political shortcomings of this reform. We also believe that the €1,000 baby bonus is grossly insufficient compared to the real and disproportionate costs of early childhood: in Committee, we pointed out that measures of this kind risk having a predominantly symbolic and electoral function, rather than a substantial impact on the life choices of young couples. Likewise, we voiced strong criticism of the amnesty on outstanding debts for nursery school fees, which we consider a poor educational signal toward those citizens who have always faithfully and with sacrifice met their payment obligations. During the debate, the opposition forces put forward numerous amendments aimed at turning this measure into a genuine, long-term structural reform: among our proposals were a significant increase in the birth bonus, the free provision of diapers and formula milk through the Social Security Institute (ISS), a total moratorium and the elimination of nursery fees for the first few years, a reduction in job insecurity by cutting the maximum duration of fixed-term contracts from 24 to 12 months, the introduction of automatic wage-protection mechanisms to recover purchasing power eroded by inflation, the implementation of public housing policies against speculation and for the recovery of properties to be allocated at moderate rent, full equalization of protections for self-employed workers, and the legislative introduction of a postpartum home-support service and free psychological support for new mothers. Unfortunately, all of these proposals, though inspired by strong principles of social fairness, were systematically rejected by the majority. In light of these considerations, the opposition forces have decided to abstain. This is a purely political abstention, and one of firm denunciation: we acknowledge the partial steps forward made in terms of formal protections, but we intend to highlight the insurmountable limits of a measure that is weak, fragmented and lacking an overall vision capable of truly confronting the demographic winter now afflicting the Republic. What is missing is a strategic vision addressing the real, structural causes of the crisis; what is missing is the implementation of the ICEE as a tool for substantive fairness, with some measures still calibrated solely on income rather than on overall assets — a sign of a political will still too timid in pursuing social justice. Finally, what was lacking was a genuinely shared and participatory working method, one that would have made it possible to build a stronger, broader reform in the general interest of the country. Our abstention is therefore not a preconceived opposition, but a strong and resounding call for the need to build family policies that are authentically structural, capable of giving our young people the real possibility of imagining and planning their future within the Republic of San Marino.”
