Flows Decree, Mantovano: the limitations of the click day are evident, we will reform the system

The government is working to reform the system of quotas and click days, which show 'obvious limits'. The objective: to widen the mesh of the entry of out-of-quota foreign workers, also by envisaging 'a new channel for the most sought-after profiles, known as high labour tension, which would allow many employers and workers to escape the competition on the edge of seconds'. Illustrating the direction of travel, anticipated in the Sole 24 Ore of 13 June, was the undersecretary to the presidency of the Council, Alfredo Mantovano, who was heard by the parliamentary Schengen Committee yesterday. The breakthrough will not be immediate. In the meantime, Mantovano hoped that the Prime Minister's Council would definitively approve the Flussi 2026-2028 decree by mid-September, in time for the start of the pre-compilation of applications from October 2025, and claimed the approximately 165,000 admissions authorised each year over the next three years, against the 48,000 of the Letta government, the 31,000 of the Renzi, Gentiloni and Conte eras and the 69,000 of the Draghi era.

But 'it hits the nail on the head', he noted, the criticism of 'those who call for a step forward with regard to the entry mechanism'. Even if it will be difficult to give up quotas altogether, 'a sort of tap for controlling economic migration that the government must be able to open and close', the out-of-quota experiments have increased, up to the 10,000 carers for the disabled and the elderly envisaged by Decree Law 145/2024. This measure will be made permanent without numerical quotas, Mantovano confirmed. The channel for workers trained in their countries of origin will also grow: since 2023, over 50 projects have been approved in more than 20 countries involving 6,000 people, of whom 1,055 have finished the course.

The quotas reserved for employer associations in tourism and agriculture are also good. A collaboration to be enhanced. Here Mantovano mentioned the hypothesis of the new channel for the most sought-after profiles. Only once a large part of the admissions for work had been put out of quota 'could we imagine alternative criteria to the click day' for the remaining ones. But 'we do not intend to relax controls on entry procedures', given the infiltration of crime even in the management of legal flows. The drastic reduction in applications from 688,200 in 2024 to 160,900 'shows that we are on the right track. There is no going back'.