Every year, thousands of young Italians leave the place where they grew up to seek opportunities elsewhere that they cannot find here. For many, this means moving from the South to the Centre-North; for others, it means leaving the country altogether. The point, however, is not where they go. The point is why they feel they cannot stay.

In Southern Italy, this phenomenon is particularly pronounced. According to SVIMEZ, it is increasingly the case that young people with the highest levels of education are the ones leaving. Whilst in 2002 university graduates accounted for around one in five young people leaving the region, by 2024 this figure had risen to almost three in five. In 2024 alone, the South lost around 24,000 young graduates through migration to the Centre-North and emigration abroad.

We are not just losing people. We are losing human capital – developed using taxpayers’ money – which will generate innovation, growth and tax revenue elsewhere.

This is not a problem specific to Southern Italy. It is a problem for Italy as a whole.

European economies compete on their ability to attract and retain talent. If a country invests in the education of its young people but fails to create the conditions for them to build their future within that country, it forgoes part of its competitiveness.

Italy’s problem is not that young people are leaving: it is that, all too often, they do not have the freedom to choose whether to stay. Leaving in search of a better opportunity is a positive choice. Being forced to leave because one’s own region offers no alternatives is a loss for everyone: for the individuals, for their families and for the country.

Freeing up those who create jobs

For far too long, public debate has focused on one-off incentives, bonuses and grants. But a business does not grow on the back of subsidies.

It grows if it can invest, recruit and innovate in a straightforward, stable and predictable environment.

Every unnecessary formality, every duplicated procedure, every authorisation that takes months to process represents a hidden cost that reduces productivity and competitiveness.

The state should not take the place of the market. It should do what it is meant to do: remove the obstacles that prevent businesses from creating value.

Less red tape, lower tax burdens on labour and simpler rules mean more investment, more jobs and greater opportunities for young people.

The freedom to live wherever you choose

Digital transformation has profoundly changed the way we work.

For many professions, the place of residence no longer necessarily coincides with the place of work.

By 2026, quality of life and work-life balance had become decisive factors in the competition between businesses. Companies that are able to offer greater flexibility – where this is compatible with the role in question – can more easily attract talent and retain skilled staff who might otherwise be tempted to move elsewhere.

Organisational flexibility is not just a choice that benefits workers. It is also a tool that enhances businesses’ competitiveness.

And yet we continue to organise the labour market according to models devised decades ago.

Not all work can be done remotely, and it is only right to acknowledge that. But where the nature of the work allows it, it should be possible to choose.

We need to create a system of incentives that rewards companies which, on a voluntary basis and where compatible with their business activities, adopt organisational models based on target-based working and flexible working.

The incentive must not take the form of new public subsidies, but rather a targeted and temporary reduction in the tax and social security burden, leaving businesses with more resources to allocate to investment, recruitment and innovation. This is not welfare. It is a policy that breathes new life into those who generate wealth and restores dignity to families and local communities.

A more balanced Italy

A wider uptake of flexible working could help make small towns and inland areas more attractive.

It can ease the pressure on large cities, reduce traffic, limit daily commutes and distribute income, consumption and economic opportunities more evenly across the country. It does not mean preventing people from leaving, but rather giving them back an opportunity that is all too often lacking today.

The freedom to shape your own future in the place where you want to live.

A reformist proposal

Italy needs a government that stops hindering those who create jobs and returns to fulfilling its role: ensuring simple rules, efficient institutions and a tax system that rewards investors.

This is the direction in which we, as Base Popolare, want to work: to build a country that gives businesses room to breathe rather than stifling them, that encourages investment rather than dependence on subsidies, and that puts people’s freedom at the heart of everything.

That is why we are proposing a model based on less bureaucracy, a lower tax burden on labour, targeted incentives for organisational innovation and greater flexibility where technology makes this possible.

Because the state should not decide where a citizen should live. It must create the conditions to enable everyone to choose freely where to build their life.

The freedom to leave is an achievement. The freedom to stay must once again become one.

That is precisely what reforms are for: to give citizens back the freedom to choose.