Among the far-right Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni's priorities is one that particularly resonates with her "friend" Elon Musk, the billionaire who is always around the 47th US president Donald Trump, with whom she has forged a close relationship. Since taking office at the end of 2022, the head of the Italian government has been focusing on a challenge that is increasingly worrying European leaders of all political persuasions: demographic decline. France, for example, saw the number of births on its territory fall by 21.5% between 2010 and 2024. Despite that, the French population continues to grow slightly, buoyed by immigration, France's national statistics office revealed on January 14 in its annual demographic review.
This decline is particularly significant in Italy, an aging country where births are becoming increasingly rare, but is not an "inevitability," according to Meloni. For the nationalist leader, solutions must be found without resorting to long-term immigration, in contrast to Spain's approach, led by socialist Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez. For Rome, which is nevertheless planning for 452,000 foreigners to enter the labor market by the end of 2025, the option of migration is seen solely from the perspective of a labor shortage.
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