It's not a country for young people without a Generational Impact Assessment
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missing protections
Europe spends ten times more on the elderly than on children and families. In Italy, this disproportion is even more marked. We need a tool to measure the impact of laws on young people
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In a country that is inexorably aging, it is inevitable to imagine adaptation policies: health, welfare, pension reforms. But Italy lacks a vision to rebalance the distribution of resources between generations. And it lacks a tool to measure the impact of laws on young people. The data are implacable: Europe spends ten times more on the elderly than on children and families. In Italy, this disproportion is even more marked. It is not just a question of public finances. The problem is also cultural and institutional: the Constitution guarantees inviolable rights to citizens, but does not explicitly protect future generations. Only with the reform of Article 9, in 2022, was an explicit clause introduced in favor of the environment "also in the interest of future generations". But if concern for the climate today finds space in public discourse, the same does not happen for broader intergenerational policies. A tool is needed to achieve this: a Generational Impact Assessment (IGA) of laws and regulations.
The Vig could become the qualitative measure of the legislation of the future but we must avoid repeating the mistakes of the past. In Italy, two tools already exist: the Regulatory Impact Analysis (AIR), to be carried out before the presentation of a law, and the Regulatory Impact Verification (VIR), to be carried out ex post . In theory, these are valuable mechanisms, but in practice they have remained on the margins of the legislative process. There are three reasons for their failure. First, the AIR is entrusted to the same offices that propose the laws. Second, the VIR is rarely applied because the pace of legislative activity does not allow for ex post reflection, and because there are no sanctions or incentives to actually implement it. Third, neither AIR nor VIR have been provided with sufficient resources, skills and independence to influence policymaking.
The point is crucial today, because there is an opportunity to insert the Vig into our legal system: the bill on regulatory simplification approved by the Senate last May 8. The text provides (art. 4) the introduction of the generational impact assessment, but unfortunately it ties it to the Air, thus entrusting it to the same proponents of the rules, with a partial approach: limited only to social and environmental aspects, excluding economic and redistributive ones . As if the effect on public finances, on taxation or on intergenerational equity had nothing to do with young people. In the passage to the Chamber, the text was further burdened. Thus there is a risk of a double failure: the bureaucratization of a potentially useful idea and its substantial emptying. While the only criterion for evaluating a good law should be its ability to last over time and to serve generations equally.
At the local level, however, something is moving – and it works. The city of Parma was the first, in 2023, to introduce the Vig in its programmatic documents. Parma will also be the European Youth Capital in 2027, and has started a process of listening and structured inclusion of the needs of the new generations. Bologna followed in 2024, and aims to draw up the first intergenerational budget. Other municipalities are joining, also thanks to the work of Anci, which in May 2025 published guidelines for spreading the Vig in local administrations. Unlike national procedures, here the evaluation is not entrusted to the same offices that produce the documents, but occurs with broader involvement : these are often participatory tools, which cross-reference data, evidence and listening to the young people themselves. In other words, it works because it is not only technical, but also political. It is a way to structure that “Youth perspective” that we are trying to promote at a European level: a principle according to which every legislative act should be evaluated with respect to its impact on the new generations.
It is clear that the Ministry of Economy, which rightly claims control over the sustainability of public accounts, may be somewhat wary of introducing ex ante constraints or additional assessments. But it is equally clear that without a generational point of view, any redistributive policy risks privileging those who have more power today – and not those who will live tomorrow.
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