The European Union needs more immigration to boost economic growth amid the birth rate decline among native populations, a top central banker has claimed.
Fabio Panetta, the governor of the Bank of Italy and a member of the European Central Bank Governing Council, argued that more migration is essential to bolster the economies of the EU as their populations age, such as in his home country of Italy.
“Measures that favour an influx of foreign legal workers constitute a rational response from an economic point of view,” the central banker said, according to Bloomberg.
“The entry of regular migrants should be managed in a coordinated way within the European Union, balancing productive needs with social equilibrium and reinforcing integration of foreign citizens into the education system and labor market,” Panetta continued.
Panetta pointed to Italy as being one of the countries most in need of migration, saying that it displays “many of the EU’s structural weaknesses,” with the country being tied with Portugal in the bloc for the highest number of residents over 65 years old, at 24 per cent.
Therefore, he said that the country will require “adequate migratory policies,” along with increased labour participation from women and young people, to increase economic productivity.
In contrast to the globalist position outlined by the Italian central banker, conservative Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, following the lead of countries like Hungary and Poland, has argued that rather than relying on mass migration, the government should instead focus on investing in Italian families to boost birth rates.
Meloni’s right-wing government allocated 2.5 billion euros in its 2024 budget towards supporting child birth, including tax breaks for companies who fund the social security payments of women who have two or more children as well as to those who guarantee jobs to women who have children.
“There are people who have decided to bring a child into the world this year because today they see the institutions as being more attentive to the issue of the family,” Meloni said in December. “When we talk about government, about politics, we always talk about numbers. But we don’t deal with numbers, we deal with people’s lives, their hopes, their opportunities, their possibilities.”
While there is some evidence to support the idea that mass migration bolster’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of countries that engage in the practice, it is less clear that it actually provides benefits to the people already living in the country, given that it increases the cost of housing and products, while having a negative impact on wages as the labour supply is artificially inflated.
Although this is often welcomed by corporate bosses, land owners and politicians, who see their budgets increase amid more workers being taxed, GDP per capita, which presents a clearer picture of the economic wellbeing of citizens, often suffers with mass migration.
The Economist reported in April: “Although new arrivals are clearly boosting GDP, they appear to be dragging down GDP per person—the yardstick by which economists usually assess living standards. GDP per person has fallen or failed to grow for four consecutive quarters in Australia and seven in Britain. In Canada, where the drop in the measure is most pronounced, output per person fell by 2% in 2023. The picture is similar in Germany, Iceland and New Zealand.”
The comments from the Italian central bank governor come amid a debate within Italy about its citizenship law, with centre-right Deputy Premier and Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani, who represents the pro-big business coalition partner Forza Italia (FI) in the government, calling for foreign minors to be granted citizenship after completing some of their education in Italy.
Fellow Deputy PM Matteo Salvini, who represents the populist League coalition partner, has argued that the government already grants enough citizenships, the most of any EU country in 2022, and that the government should focus on other more pressing issues surrounding migration.
Salvini said earlier this week: “Let’s deal with other things, the certainty of punishment, safer and more modern prisons, and the chemical castration for paedophiles and rapists.”
The populist leader also called for making citizenship tougher to acquire, saying: “I think we should focus more on proficiency in the Italian language… quite a few people acquire citizenship without speaking a word of Italian”.