“We have to try to get Europe to recognise a special status for our south, to allow us to launch extraordinary measures for development,” Conte said on Facebook before heading off to Brussels to meet commission’s new head, Ursula von der Leyen.
Special status would give southern Italy preferential and direct access to some EU programs.
More than 1.8 million families were living in absolute poverty in Italy’s south in 2018, according to Eurostat.
“Youth unemployment in southern Italy exceeds 50 per cent, there is a lack of investment, development policies and strategies to relaunch it,” the ruling Five Star Movement’s members of the European parliament said in a statement.
They backed Conte’s call for special status and said they would also take the fight to European austerity policies blamed for “emigration, poverty and unemployment” in the south.
