Italian Deputy Prime Minister Matteo Salvini’s League party is putting a proposal back on the table for the state to subsidize church weddings, including the costs of wedding gowns, rings, lunch, and photographs to the tune of €20,000.
The only condition is that couples have to take their vows in church.
The allowance would be available to couples’ whose annual gross income does not exceed €23,000 and who have been Italian citizens for at least 10 years.
A majority in parliament is assured this time
The League had already tabled the same proposal in parliament in April 2019, but it failed to pass then due to the 2019 government crisis. Now, the League, as part of the governing right-wing coalition, can count on a secure parliamentary majority. According to a previous party statement, the initiative is designed to increase the number of marriages and church weddings.
According to the latest figures from the Istat statistics office, just over 184,000 marriages were performed in 2019, down 6 percent from a year earlier. The share of church weddings was 47.4 percent, while in 1990, more than 82 percent of weddings were church weddings.
Italy faces one of the starkest demographic problems in the world due to a rapidly aging population and low birthrate. In 2020, only 13 percent of Italian men and 25 percent of women indicated they wanted to have children, and last year, Italy recorded its lowest-ever number of births. As Remix News reported, another 40 percent have said they do not ever want to have kids. This data may seem shocking, but experts were predicting such a scenario 30 years ago.
