The european dimension of political discourse in Italy. A ... - CIRCaP

N. CONTI / L. VERZICHELLI
and very committed to identify the party with the paternity of the diffuse “Europhilia”
pervading a large sector of the Italian public opinion.
Pci: from fierce defence of national sovereignty to support to supranational integration
As already said, the Pci was the Italian party proving the longest-lasting opposition to
European integration. From its very beginning, the integration process was seen by the party
as one face of Atlanticism, driven by the United States and addressed to establish American
hegemony in Western Europe. According to the Italian Communists, the strategy of
integrating Europe was designed by American capitalism and supported by European
capitalists, who were ready to sacrifice the national interests in order to defend their political
and economic priorities. According to this reasoning, European integration was seen as a
threat to all workers’ rights conquered in a long time in the domestic arenas.
In the Communist ideology, the persistence of a strong and unconstrained nation state was
essential for the improvement of workers’ conditions, and any threat to it would entail a
challenge to workers’ aspirations, since they would be pushed to shift the focus of their
political action from class condition improvement and struggle for power, to defence of
national sovereignty against foreign imperialism. Hence, the Pci’s international orientation did
not share much with European supranationalism (Galante 1988; 1989). In the communist
ideology, the assumption that the working class had the same orientations and served the
same interests in every country was at the core of internationalism. According to this view,
the Soviet state was the most sophisticated instrument in the hands of the working class and
this justified its leading role in the world socialist movement. Of course, this ideological
approach was not compatible with any attempt to build a supranational rule in a Western
political space.
From the analysis of the party documents, the attitudes of the Italian Communists towards
European integration seem very negative until the end of the sixties. All references to the
Common Market present the negative impact of European integration on the Italian
economy, on workers’ conditions and on democracy. We can have an idea of such an
ideological approach from an excerpt from Pci’s 1958 electoral platform:
... cooperation with millions of workers and citizens has been broken. Today, the persistence of
this rule means: installation of American missiles in the Italian territory, growing humiliating
surrender to imperialism, economic crisis and disastrous consequences of the Common
Market...
Particularly, the Common Market was accused to produce domestic unemployment, crisis of
the agricultural sector, high costs in the import/export balance and to be one of the main
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