San Marino. Lonfernini: “Frontiers, the data confirm the goodness of the choices”
The Secretary of State for Labor Teodoro Lonferini intervenes with a note on the issue of the liberalization of frontier workers.
“In reference to controversy and the exploitation of recent days regarding the so-called ‘liberalization of frontier workers’the Secretariat of State for Labor must investigate the issue in depth, in order to avoid a superficial and incomplete reading of the interventions and the path that led the aforementioned Secretariat of State, the Congress of State and the Great and General Council to adopt certain choices.
In the analysis, therefore, it is necessary to start from Law 115/2017 – now repealed – which introduces an indiscriminate liberalization of frontier workers, in exchange for the payment of a “donation” equal to 4.5%.
These interventions, as well as due to embarrassments with Italy and the European Union, had also generated some distortions. First of all, a disproportionate increase in non-resident workers, whose number, from 2016 to 2019, increased by 1105 units (369 per year) to the detriment of that of residents, which grew only slightly (300 units, on average 100 per year). In fact, as of 31 December 2019, the number of resident unemployed remained very high: 1041 units with an unemployment rate of 6.27%. Furthermore, liberalization as at the time set had led to a disqualification of frontier workers: companies in fact preferred to equip themselves with unskilled labor rather than train San Marino workers or, more likely, thanks to liberalization, they hired skilled frontier labor in lower grades. . Also in this case, the data support this thesis: if in 2016 only 32% of cross-border commuters were hired in unskilled jobs, in 2019 this number increased to 38%.
The onset of the pandemic and the consequent rise in unemployment prompted the government to promptly block liberalization. This decision, together with the economic recovery, meant that on 30 June 2021 – date of publication of the law decree 130/2021 which applies the innovative concept according to which the liberalization of frontier workers no longer takes place indiscriminately, but is based on general unit rate or on the specific unemployment rates of certain professional categories – the number of resident workers exceeded by almost 400 units that recorded on the same date in 2019, while that of frontier workers decreased by about 100 and that the unemployed were from 1041 to 741.
From 1 July 021 it was therefore possible to quickly protect2 those more ‘crowded’ categories from our unemployed.
Thus, companies that needed to hire cross-border workers qualifications for jobs for which residents were not available, were no longer obliged to improperly make an extra cost, while the deplorable practice of putting the costs of liberalization back on shoulders of the workers, hiring them at levels not suited to their professionalism.
Also in this case, the data confirmed the goodness of the choice: from 31 May 2021 to 31 May 2022, frontier workers increased significantly, without however penalizing the residents, who continued to grow by a further 200 units in just one year. , reducing the number of unemployed (down to 445 people) and the unemployment rate (down to 2.69%), bringing the numbers to historic lows.
Also important is the variation in the ‘quality’ of cross-border commuters who today for 66% are hired in qualified and specialized jobs (or higher), while in 2019, in full liberalization, they were only 61%. This, in addition to doing justice to workers, is worth much more than 4.5% also in terms of contributions.
This positive condition for San Marino employment has therefore prompted the Labor Commission, as envisaged by the Delegated Decree 130/2021, to temporarily liberalize the recruitment of frontier workers. However, the system introduced by Decree 130/2021 allows for monthly monitoring of the data and therefore the possibility of intervening, therefore the possibility of intervening and therefore the possibility of intervening and exiting liberalization, if the numbers of internal employment or certain professional categories should get worse.
It is therefore a controlled liberalization, no longer based on the payment of an additional and unlimited cost, but based on objective data that allows us to understand when it is necessary to protect internal employment ”.
Teodoro Lonfernini (Secretary of State for Labor): ‘To instrumental controversies, aimed only at deciding past choices that have proved unhappy, we prefer to respond with facts, confirmed by the data. Extraordinary interventions during the COVID period, the delegate decree 130/2021 ratified last July, together with the revision of the incentives approved yesterday in the Council, extraordinary possibilities to achieve that balance between the freedom and speed of recruitment and the need to protect the ‘domestic occupation, the goal of the government program.’