Prime Minister Meloni said that she would not vote and that the opposition accuses the government of alleviating the interest in immigrant issues.
An Italian referendum on soften the rules of citizenship And the strengthening of work protections failed after the Prime Minister hard on the right Giorgia Meloni encouraged voters to boycott the vote.
While the polls finished on Monday, it appeared that many citizens had respected the call of Meloni when only 30% of the electorate voted Two days of votingWell below the 50% plus, it is necessary to make the result legally binding.
The result was a clear defeat for the Central Gauche opposition, which had proposed to halve the period of residence required to request Italian citizenship from 10 to five years and to reverse the liberation of the labor market introduced a decade ago.
The Prime Minister said that it was “absolutely against” citizenship proposals, announcing that it would appear in the polls but does not vote.
A declared objective of the Meloni government is to reduce irregular immigration, but it has increased the number of immigrant work visas.
The secretary general of the general Italian Labor Union Confederation Maurizio Landini criticized the low participation rate as a sign of a “clear democratic crisis” in Italy.
“We knew that it would not be a walk in the park,” he said, stressing that millions of Italians had presented themselves to fight for change.
The party of the brothers of Italy of Meloni posted on social networks that the “only real objective” of the referendum was to bring down the government of Meloni, and that added, alongside photos of the opposition leaders: “In the end, it was the Italians who made you fall.”
Opinion polls published in mid-May showed that 46% of Italians were aware of the problems that stimulate referendums.
Activists and opposition parties accused the governing coalition of having deliberately attenuated interest in sensitive issues that directly affect immigrants and workers.
Activists for the change in the citizenship law said that this would help children of non -European parents are better integrated into a culture that they already consider theirs.
The changes in laws would have affected around 2.5 million foreign nationals.
Other questions in the referendum have dealt with questions related to the workforce such as better protections against dismissal, higher dismissal payments and the conversion of fixed-term contracts into permanent regions.
The opposition forces had hoped that the promotion of these causes would help them to court the voters of the working class and to challenge Meloni, which they had trouble since his coming to power in 2022.
Many of the 78 referendums held in Italy in the past have failed due to the low participation.