Italy needs more migrants, but has trouble admitting it

Francesco Lollobrigida, Italy’s agriculture minister, is seen as one of the most radical ministers in the hard-right government headed by his sister-in-law, Giorgia Meloni. In April opposition politicians accused him of propagating white supremacism after a speech in which he seemed to endorse a conspiracy theory that claims global capitalists are conniving to replace Europeans with poor immigrants so as to suppress wages. Yet three months later Mr Lollobrigida said something few if any of his more liberal cabinet predecessors have dared to say publicly. “We need immigration,” he told a youth convention.And how. The number of births in Italy last year, 393,000, was the lowest ever recorded. Already, a big gap has opened up in the labour market: a survey of employers for Italy’s chambers of commerce found they expected to have 531,000 vacancies this month, but thought almost half could remain unfilled, largely because of a lack of applicants. That in turn slows growth.