Brussels – Italy has a problem with wages, which have been at a standstill for too long. An issue that even the European Environment Agency recognizes and highlights in its annual report on the state of the environment. It is a comprehensive document, with detailed country sections that include numerous remarks. Prominent among these is the reminder about the payroll policy in Italy, considered one of the reasons for the energy poverty from which Italian families suffer.
“Italy is experiencing a widening economic gap between generations,” notes the European Environment Agency (EEA) study. “The younger a person is, the more likely they are to struggle; this is the result of a 30-year stagnation in salaries.“ This is a criticism of the entire Italian political class, which concerns the governments that have succeeded each other so far and which does not seem to spare even the current executive led by Giorgia Meloni, given that improvements on this front are neither underlined nor mentioned but they are inevitable since “ltaly is facing increasingly evident socio-economic challenges”, visible even among experts who are not exactly experts on economic issues.
It is no coincidence that the report explicitly stresses that “environmental challenges are intertwined with social and economic ones.” In this sense, it highlights how wages that don’t match the cost of living are tied to the struggle to pay utility bills, including heating costs. The chapter regarding Italy of the annual report notes that energy poverty (defined as difficulty in acquiring the minimum basket of energy goods and services) affects 7.7 percent of households, a figure that rises to 9.5 percent if one considers households unable to heat their homes adequately.
In light of this need to link environmental challenges with socio-economic ones, the Italian government is asked for “an integrated approach capable of combining environmental protection, innovation, and collective welfare.” The curious agenda of reforms defined by the European Environment Agency does not end here, because it also suggests a targeted use of the European funds made available with the Recovery Fund, the financial instrument for National Recovery and Resilience Plans (NRRP). “The NRRP is a decisive tool for supporting sustainability, innovation, and competitiveness, while the National Sustainable Development Strategy, in line with the 2030 Agenda, remains the reference framework for ensuring coherent and long-term policies.”
English version by the Translation Service of Withub
