Teenagers in Italy will receive free vouchers worth more than €500 (£400) to go to museums, concerts and the cinema in a bid to keep them away from the lure of Islamic extremism, the Italian government has announced.

More than half a million 18-year-old European citizens living in the country will receive the vouchers, in a scheme that is expected to cost the government about €290 million (£250 million).

'It sends a clear message — a welcome for those who reach the age of 18 and a reminder of how crucial culture is, both for personal enrichment and for strengthening the social fabric of the country,' Tommaso Nannicini, the official in charge of the program, said.

Teens will be able to choose how to spend the money via a specially designed smartphone app when the scheme begins in mid-September.

Italian policemen stand guard near the Vatican on January 8, 2015 in Rome. Italy plans to fight the threat of youths being recruited to extremist groups with culture

It comes as a welcome gift in a country that has a youth unemployment rate of 40 per cent.

Prime Minister Matteo Renzi announced the plan last year just days after the Paris attack that killed at least 130 people and wounded hundreds.

He pledged to fight terrorism with culture.

'What happened in Paris signaled a step-up in the cultural battle that we are living,' Renzi said.

'They imagine terror, we answer with culture. They destroy statues, we love art. They destroy books, we are the country of libraries.'

His bid to unify Italian identity and heritage has now been approved by parliament.

Italy has so far been successful in thwarting major terror attacks as Europe suffers.

On Thursday, a senior member of Chancellor Angela Merkel's conservative party said Germany should change its law to make it easier to deport 'preachers of hate' and other potentially dangerous individuals, like Italy does.

Prime Minister Matteo Renzi announced the plan last year just days after the Paris attack that killed at least 130 people

Italian police officers stand guard by people gathered in St. Peter's at the Vatican

Stephan Mayer, security spokesman for the Christian Democratic party in parliament, told the Passauer Neue Presse newspaper that Germany had made strides in its fight against Islamist militants but that more work was needed, including steps to increase deportations of potential attackers.

Mayer said Italy had deported 102 'preachers of hate' since January 1, 2015, people who had not been convicted but were in the process of self-radicalization.

'We should change our residency requirements in this same direction,' Mayer told the newspaper.

'We should deport more rigorously, like Bavaria, which is a real role model for the other states.' Mayer is a member of the Bavaria-based Christian Social Union (CSU), which is allied with Merkel's Christian Democratic Union (CDU) but has been critical of her open-door refugee policy.

Merkel, speaking at a news conference with Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi on Wednesday, also addressed the need to step up deportations of those migrants denied asylum in Germany and elsewhere.

Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi meets German Chancellor Angela Merkel during a regular Italo-German summit

Italian police snipers stand guard as Pope Francis boards a plane to Africa in 2015 at Fiumicino Rome's international airport

Italian police officers stand guard outside Rome's Termini station that was evacuated after railway police said they had received an alert that an armed man had been spotted on a platform in January

Germany deported about 16,000 migrants whose asylum applications had been rejected from January to the end of July, compared with 21,000 deportations in all of 2015, and some 35,000 migrants accepted financial incentives and left voluntarily.

By the end of July, there were about 215,000 people who were supposed to leave, although 163,000 were being allowed to stay for humanitarian reasons, government data showed.

A spokesman for the Interior Ministry said improvements were needed despite a sharp increase in the rate of deportations.

Mayer said Germany should also increase surveillance of the dozens of Germany's 2,000-plus mosques that taught a radical form of Islam and stop allowing those institutions to import clerics from Arab countries. Europe should also accelerate data-sharing among intelligence agencies, he said.

The two conservative parties will discuss security measures during a two-day conference that begins in Berlin on Thursday.

A position paper prepared for the conference calls for Germany to increase funding for its part in the U.S.-led coalition fighting the Islamic State militant group.