Italy and the EU: From True Love to Disenchantment?

As a founding member of the European Union, for a long time Italy was one of the foremost supporters of the integration process. For many years no significant change occurred to this unchallenged Europhilia, and a ‘pro-integrationist paradigm’ tended to prevail whenever Italy expressed itself on European governance. Despite there having been no serious breach against a substantial pro-European policy, what has changed since the early 1990s is the public discourse on Europe, the attitude of a part of the political elites, and the public’s support for the European project. This trend was amplified during the 2000s, leading to the lowest recorded level of support for European integration. In this respect, Italy is not different from other EU countries; however, despite sharing similarities with other European cases, Italy’s attitude towards the EU has deep national-specific roots in the following: (1) the way in which adherence to Europe was understood in the early days (which set a path dependency that lasted for a long time); (2) a specific feature of Italian political identity; (3) the domestic transformations of the political institutional context; and (4) the gradual delegitimation of politics and the transformation of national identity. In other words, the negative impact of the economic crisis – frequently considered the main reason for rising Euroscepticism among the Europeans – is only the latest in a long line of reasons why the Italians have passed from true love of European integration to disenchantment