Journal of European Integration History - Centre d'études et de ...

Book reviews – Comptes rendus – Buchbesprechungen 173
Sante CRUCIANI, L’Europa delle Sinistre. La nascita del Mercato Comune
Europeo attraverso i casi francese e italiano (1955-1957), Carocci, Rome, 2007,
234 p. – ISBN 978-88-430-4232-b – 19.50 €.
In “L’Europa delle Sinistre”, Sante Cruciani aims to reconstruct the politics of the
main Western political forces of the Left (the PCI, the PCF, the SFIO and the Italian
and French trade unions: the CGT and the CGIL) towards the process of European
integration, paying attention both to the domestic and internal aspects, and those of
the international ground. The wide comparison has probably induced reducing the
considered span, focusing the research on the key period 1955-57, when the Common
European Market was founded.
Beginning from the idea that the process of European integration stimulated the
political cultures to redefine their relationship with the economic growth and their
action on the domestic ground, (Romero, 1995), Cruciani attempts to predate the
origin of the Western Left’s Europeanism – usually considered to be the 1970s – in
the 1950s. The author focuses on the evolution of the political culture of the Italian
and French Communism and Socialism towards the commencement of the European
Common Market, with particular attention to the topics of the Government’s economic
growth and the strengthening of the Welfare State (pp.14-15).
The process of European integration is used by Cruciani as a tool to analyse the
Western Left’s degree of awareness of political and economic processes in Europe
during the 1950s, and its capability to modify its strategy for the new challenges of
the European integration. The contributions of the Communist and Socialist Parties
and Trade Unions to the affirmation of the European social model are also being
considered (p.223).
The book is based on primary sources, especially on the Archives of the political
actors involved, and the Acts of the Italian and French Parliaments; and secondary
sources.
Dealing with the Western Left’s contribution to the European integration, some
topoi of the history of political Parties are re-confirmed by this book, while some
others constitute a new interpretation of the Western Left’s historiography image.
With regards to the last, Cruciani refuses the idea of Donald Sassoon, according to
whom, in the first phases of the European integration, the Socialist role was unessential.
On the contrary, the author attributes a particular position to the SFIO, and dates
the beginning of the political revision of the Italian Communist Party, about the
European integration issue, in the 1950s.
Particularly, the role played by the SFIO is considered to be “relevant”. The reassessment
of French socialism – Cruciani argues – brought a “qualitative vision of
the European integration as privileged ground of a socialist initiative in the Western
Europe, aiming to combine the economic development and the social cohesion” (p.
223). This strategy was shared by the German SPD and the Socialist Parties of the
Benelux, which all stress the need to re-launch the European integration. During the