New anti-poverty benefit will up poverty says EC (5)

(ANSA) - ROME, MAY 8 - The government's new 'inclusion cheque' anti-poverty benefit will actually increase poverty in Italy, the European Commission said Wednesday.
    The benefit will raise absolute poverty by 0.8 percentage points and child poverty by 0.5 percentage points, with respect to the previous regime, said the EU executive.
    New and more rigorous criteria for getting the benefit will reduce the impact in easing poverty, said Brussels.
    The EC said in the analysis on social convergence dedicated to Italy conducted by the EU Commission in the framework of the European Semester: "It is expected that the inclusion allowance will lead to a higher incidence of absolute and child poverty (0.8 percentage points and 0.5 percentage points, respectively) compared to the previous scheme".
    It said: "Despite some positive accompanying measures, stricter eligibility criteria for the support introduced in January are expected to reduce the poverty-relieving impact of the new scheme".
    The new benefit is intended to make up for the loss of the costly and fraud-dogged 'citizenship wage' basic income, which has been abolished.
    Government critics say the basic income was actually working better than its critics said.
    The income was a flagship policy of the anti-establishment 5-Star Movement, which claimed to have "abolished poverty" with it. (ANSA).