It will be called Mia, an acronym for Active Inclusion Measure. It is the new measure that will replace the Citizenship Income and which is still being defined. The wait is great and the works are still in progress. More will probably be known in a couple of weeks when the Minister of Labor, Elvira Calderone, will bring the decree law for the reform of the Citizenship Income to the Council of Ministers.
It must be said that the new measure will take effect in September. To those who receive the Citizenship Income today, the Budget law has given a seven-month extension in 2023. This means that Mia can be requested from August (or from 1 September). For now, however, these are hypotheses.
Who can apply
The maneuver divided the audience of potential beneficiaries into two groups. One is that of poor households with no employable people and the other is that of households with employable people. The first are those where there is at least one minor or an elderly person over 60 or a disabled person. The second are those where there are no such situations but at least one subject between 18 and 60 years of age. This is the group of people who can be employed (estimated at 400,000 households).
The allowance amounts will change but only for employable people. There are no certainties on the numbers yet. However, it is already clear that for those who can be employed, the Mine will be less generous and will have a shorter duration than the Citizenship Income: according to the hypotheses for those who can be employed, who currently only receive the DRC for seven months of 2023, the base (for a single) will most likely be around 375 euros.
For the other families, the one without the employable, the basic amount should remain 500 euros with a confirmed duration of 18 months (as for the Income).
The many squeezes
It’s not just the amounts of the checks and the times that are getting shorter. This is the case, for example, of rentals: for those who can be employed, the additional quota is under discussion. The Income provided for up to 280 euros per month. With Mia this quota could be lightened and remodulated according to the number of members of the nucleus.
Furthermore, the new subsidy will probably not be able to be requested and renewed several times as was the case with the Income, obtaining another 18 months of assistance each time. For unemployed families, from the second application onwards, the maximum duration of the Mia will be reduced to 12 months. This is the hypothesis. At least a month must pass between one request and another. For households with employable people, on the other hand, the path will be more tortuous. Among the third question, according to assumptions, it will be possible to ask only after a break of one and a half years. The first expiry of the Mia will come after a year for the first time and after six months for the second.
Isee lower
Nothing is certain yet. But even the Isee ceiling to obtain Mia will most likely see a tightening with respect to the requirements for the Citizenship Income. According to the hypotheses that circulate, the ceiling for being entitled to the new Mia will drop from the current 9,360 euros to 7,200 euros. This is a considerable cut that could leave several thousand families out of the audience of beneficiaries, probably a third of the total. On the other hand, assistance to large families will improve: the so-called equivalence scale will be corrected, the one that increases the allowance based on the number of family members.
Residency requirement
Apparently, the requirement of residence in Italy will also change. It will drop from 10 years requested by the Income to 5 years, in order not to incur the censures of the Consulta and of Brussels. This will widen the audience of potential beneficiaries.
The scenery
«Mia was born from the desire to resolve the issue of active policies and to move what is now a subsidy to the issue of active policy. So, obviously, it’s not a reverse – says Federico Freni, undersecretary of the Ministry of Economy, speaking to Agorà Rai Tre -. It was said that the Citizenship Income would be changed. It was said that a measure would have been imagined that would have allowed those who cannot work to be supported and those who do not want to work to be forced to work if they want to. And this is being done. With Mia there will be, within certain limits, with certain possibilities, competition between work and Citizenship Income».