Tigna quota. Fornero against the Lega’s fund: “A brazen and deceptive measure”

For almost fifteen years, the Lega has campaigned against Elsa Fornero. Now she is the one dismantling the Carroccio’s flagship policy. In an interview with La Stampa, the former Minister for Labour has rejected the 850 million fund with which the government promises to finance retirement as early as 64 – the provision that allowed Matteo Salvini to celebrate once again: “We have overcome the Fornero law”. Her response: “A brazen and misleading measure”.

It is brazen “because it is not a structural reform, yet it is being passed off as one”. For Fornero, it is “yet another short-term ploy by a man on the hunt for votes”, who has failed to realise how his own electorate has changed: those who voted for him believing his promises no longer see early retirement as “neither a benefit for themselves nor an advantage for young people”. If the Deputy Prime Minister persists, she says, it is for “personal reasons, a matter of sheer stubbornness”. She adds: “He still hasn’t grasped how a pension system works. He hasn’t even found a single competent person to explain it to him clearly.”

The deception lies in the figures. The fund, which appears to be a three-year scheme, applies to everyone rather than to specific groups in difficulty. With the entirely contribution-based calculation, Fornero warns, the pension will be “inevitably and significantly lower”, because those retiring today lose out both due to the lower retirement age and because they are foregoing the earnings-related component. Then there is the issue of funding: “You cannot call this advance ‘flexibility’ without specifying that it will be financed by a new tax on pensioners”. These are people with “pensions that are anything but generous”, she points out, who have already lost purchasing power due to de-indexation: between 2016 and 2025, according to the calculations she cites, a pension of 2,500 euros has lost around a quarter of its value.

This is the very same point that Giuliano Cazzola addresses today in Il Foglio, detailing the cuts to pension index-link increases pushed through by Salvini and Claudio Durigon. The League, which promises to retire workers earlier, is the very same party that is cutting the pensions of those who are already retired.

Fornero’s assessment of the budget is no longer lenient: “no strategy”, “yet another stopgap measure designed not to upset anyone”. Extending the flat tax to the self-employed earning up to one hundred thousand euros is “a nod to tax evaders”, whilst scrapping road tax on small cars is a gift even to those who, “as well as a Panda”, might “have a Ferrari”. Young people are left with “a meagre package, perhaps good for a year”. And the problem, she concludes, lies elsewhere: “The point isn’t handouts to win elections. Today’s young people complain about the lack of direction, the real sense of opportunity”. The funds set aside for them, she says, are mere crumbs.