Key facts
- The bill lets medics removed from professional registers for serious violations tied to anti-vaccination beliefs apply for reinstatement.
- Approval in the lower house depended on support from National Future, led by Roberto Vannacci, with Forza Italia allies split.
- The senate vote is scheduled for January, according to the Guardian.
- Nearly one in two Italian adults are hesitant about vaccination, per a University of Turin report in the Lancet Regional Health Europe in February.
- Italy reported 472 measles infections in the first five months of 2026, against 322 in the same period a year earlier, per health ministry figures.
- Flu vaccine take-up among people aged 65 and over fell to 49.81% this season, the first drop below 50% since the winter of 2014-15.
Italy's lower house of parliament approved in October 2026 a bill that allows healthcare workers removed from their professional registers during the pandemic for serious violations connected to anti-vaccination beliefs, such as promoting treatments lacking a scientific basis, to apply for reinstatement, the Guardian reported on November 12, 2026.
The bill is championed by Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni's Brothers of Italy party and strongly backed by its far-right coalition partner, the League. With allies in Forza Italia split, its approval in the lower house hinged on support from National Future, a rival far-right force led by the former army general Roberto Vannacci, whose emergence is shaping the political landscape before general elections next year. The measure still needs to clear the senate, with a vote scheduled in January.
Medical experts have raised concern less about the number of healthcare workers involved, which is believed to be very small, than about the risk of further eroding trust in vaccines. Nearly one in two Italian adults are hesitant about vaccination, according to a report by the department of public health and paediatric sciences at the University of Turin published in the Lancet Regional Health Europe in February. The report, which sampled 50,000 adults across Italy, found the ambivalence was driven more by misinformation and lack of institutional trust than by fears over vaccine safety.
Roberta Siliquini, head of the school of hygiene and preventive medicine at the University of Turin and the report's chief researcher, said political communication and a lack of trust among Italians in institutions carry a significant weight. She said there is a disinformation campaign and that those who want to disinform are very good at communicating.
Italy has seen a resurgence in measles, with 472 infections reported during the first five months of 2026, compared with 322 in the same period a year earlier, according to health ministry figures. More than half of the cases were reported in young adults. Take-up of the flu vaccine among people aged 65 and over so far this season has dipped to 49.81%, the first time it has fallen below 50% since the winter of 2014-15.
In August, a four-year-old child in Palermo, Sicily, died of diphtheria. Her parents reportedly told doctors they had not vaccinated her because her cousin was autistic and they were convinced vaccines were the reason. There is no evidence of any link between autism and vaccines.
On October 28, a day after the lower house vote, League politician Claudio Borghi came under fire for hosting an anti-vaccine seminar in the senate. Later in the day, in what was believed to have been an indirect rebuke, President Sergio Mattarella used a speech during a cancer research gathering to condemn the spread of anti-vax messages while warning against irrational beliefs and destructive fake news. Borghi has proposed revising a 2017 law that extended the number of obligatory childhood vaccinations from four to 10, and has defended his position, arguing he is not anti-vaccine but that mandatory vaccines lead to resistance. He told the Guardian the reinstatement proposal's aim was to foster reconciliation after all these years, adding that in his view nobody should lose their job because of a personal belief.
Lorenzo Mattia Signori, a nurse in Veneto and a regional secretary for the patient advocacy association Cittadinanzattiva, said politicians were opportunists and that Meloni's coalition was trying to draw votes from anti-vax voters as it eyed a second mandate. He said ensuring that people get vaccinated is the largest prevention system available, and that if everyone gets sick instead the Italian healthcare system would not hold. He hopes Mattarella will use his power as president to stop the measure from being signed into law.