Italian People and European Choice

di Maria Grazia Melchionni
in Memoria e Ricerca n.s. 6 (2000), p. 17

Italian people's europanism is partly rooted in their mistrust toward national institutions, and the Author inquires about contemporary historical reasons of that.Anyhow the phenomenon has been, in Italy as elsewhere till the European Parliament elections, a rather elitist one, and even now European propensity seems to be diffused mostly between people belonging to moderate and central areas. The essay analizes characters and evolution, during the last fifty years, of Italian contribution to the integration process, relating it to other political problems settled throughout.