(Bloomberg) -- Italy’s level of LGBTQIA+ inclusion has stopped improving and is now lagging advances seen in the rest of Europe, a new report showed.

While the country was in line with the regional average 20 years ago, it has since fallen behind many peers, according to the study that looks at the relationship between LGBTQIA+ inclusion and local economic development and was conducted by Italian think tank Tortuga and pressure group EDGE.

Most of the progress made was thanks to the introduction of same-sex civil unions in Italy eight years ago through the so-called Cirinna law. Without that, Italy’s inclusion level would likely be close to those of Poland and Hungary, which have the lowest scores on the study’s index.

“There is a positive correlation between LGBTQIA+ inclusion and socio-economic development,” the report found. “The most inclusive labor systems are 61% wealthier than the least inclusive ones.”

The study examined data from across the peninsula closely examining which areas for example had more civil unions in relation to the resident population and found high correlation coefficients between inclusion, economic development and attractiveness of territories.

This is the second such study by Milan-based Tortuga and after a similar exercise conducted four years ago. 

Focusing on Italy, the researchers also paired economic data with a sentiment analysis which looked at negative and hate speech on X — formerly knows as Twitter — by area across the country.

The results showed less of a North-South divide but rather an uneven distribution, with negative sentiment in one region sometimes close to other places where such attitudes are much less pronounced. 

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