Italy's Meloni draws fire over food aid aimed at families with children

By Federica Urso

ROME (Reuters) - A new Italian government scheme to help people with rising food bills is under attack from charities, sociologists and opposition politicians because it limits the type of households that can benefit and the types of food that can be bought.

From July 18, Giorgia Meloni's rightist government will distribute debit cards granting 1.3 million families with an annual income of up to 15,000 euros per year a one-off subsidy of 382.50 euros ($427.56) for grocery expenses.

"The government is there and is ready to do its part to help Italians in the best possible way", Meloni said in a message that presented the 500,000-euro scheme as relief against high inflation.

However, the card is reserved for households with at least three members, preferably with children, in a move seen as favouring traditional families.

The government introduced the subsidy after sharply curtailing a much broader poverty relief scheme known as the "citizens' income," in place since 2019, which Meloni argued allowed people to be lazy and not seek work.

"Giorgia Meloni dismantles the only instrument of social protection, the citizens' income, with one hand and then offers a tip with the other...", said Elly Schlein, leader of the centre-left Democratic Party (PD).

Noting that the allowance amounts to about one euro per day for a year, she described it as a "zero impact" policy.

Retail lobby Confcommercio said the scheme could boost consumer spending, but Marco Impagliazzo, head of the Catholic Sant'Egidio charity, said its focus on larger households overlooked millions of elderly people.

"We would like this card to also take into account lonely elderly people ... as the elderly are often not just lonely, but also poor," he said in a news conference in Rome.

Filippo Barbera, a sociology professor at Turin University, said the card, which the government has dubbed "Dedicated to You", confirmed its approach of reducing resources for the poor and making them more selective.

"Being in need is no longer enough, now you need to be in need and also be a certain type of person considered deserving of help," he said.

Rather than giving the poor money to spend as they wish, the card can only be used to buy a specific list of foods, including meat, fish, pasta, olive oil and coffee, as well as biscuits and honey - but not jam or any frozen products.

($1 = 0.8946 euros)

(Reporting by Federica Urso Additional reporting by Alvise Armellini and Gavin Jones; Editing by Mark Potter)