The Feast of St Francis: the law budgets for the State's €10 million, not for the €3 billion paid by businesses
2 October 2026, 18:31
Sunday is 4 October, the national feast of St Francis of Assisi. It was put back on the calendar by Law 151 of 8 October 2025, passed in the Chamber of Deputies by 247 votes to 2. This year it falls on a Sunday, and when a public holiday falls on a Sunday anyone on a monthly salary receives an extra day's pay in October. According to simulations by Il Sole 24 Ore, a metalworker takes home €51.62 net; it costs the company €106.30.
The documents tell the rest. Article 3 of the law authorises spending of €10,684,044 a year "from 2027 onwards", to pay those who work that day in hospitals, in the police and in the fire service. For 2026, nothing, because it is a Sunday.
For the State, a Sunday is the case in which the holiday costs nothing. For businesses, it is the case in which it costs money without giving anyone a single extra hour of rest.
The companies' bill was drawn up, as soon as the law was passed, by Confindustria's research centre (Confindustria is Italy's main employers' federation): €3.6 billion a year in extra wages, €2.98 billion of it borne by private businesses. Almost three hundred times the figure written in the law. But that bill is not in the law, and nobody was required to put it there: Article 81 of the Italian Constitution obliges every law to say where it will find the money it makes the State spend. For the money it makes others spend, it asks nothing.
The problem goes beyond St Francis. A law that gives away a day is voted through as if it were free, because the only bill that must be accounted for is the State's. It is the friend at the restaurant who orders sparkling wine so the whole table can raise a toast and then, when the bill arrives, pays for his own glass.
The bill's first signatory, Maurizio Lupi, calls the holiday an investment, not a cost. Usually something is called an investment when whoever decides on it puts up the money.
Eight hundred years ago Francis sold the cloth from his father's shop, and the horse, to restore the church of San Damiano. His father took him before the Bishop of Assisi, and the bishop made him give the money back, because it was not his. Parliament celebrates him by doing the same thing again, with businesses' money.
The question goes to the 247 deputies who voted yes: how many of them had the companies' bill in front of them before pressing the button?
The bishop, at least, made him give the money back.
This article was prompted by a news item published in Il Sole 24 Ore on 1 October 2026.