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

N. CONTI / L. VERZICHELLI
Northern League that qualifies more as a protest-based party, Forza Italia and National
Alliance have a strategy to alternate hints of support to the general idea of integration to
others of issue-specific soft Eurosceptism. An overall attitude that allows to qualify their
broad rhetoric into a category of non-radical Eurosceptical parties.
On the whole, the picture (still a bit blurred) on the contemporary Italian parties can be seen
in the light of two points of view proposed by the comparative analyses of party attitudes. The
first one is the European vocation of social democrats (Ladrech 2000; Hooghe, Marks and
Wilson 2001), that clearly emerges in Italy looking at the Pds/Ds preferences and, more
extensively, to the platforms of the centre-left cartel (the Ulivo coalition) whose components,
particularly the catholic and the left-liberal ones, show very clear hints of identity
Europeanism 24 . No doubt, in Italy, the prevailing idea of Europe in the centre-left camp
clearly represents the modern “European socialist view”. Nonetheless, the post-communist
origin of the current leadership of the largest party of the coalition and, above all, a growing
debate within this party about the costs and benefits of Europe (particularly about the
processes of EU Institutional reform), make this picture more confused than in other
countries 25 .
Another argument could also be addresses in order to explain party attitudes to EU: core
parties have a better inclination to develop pro-integration discourse and strategies
(Szczerbiak and Taggart 2002). Surely, this applies perfectly in the case of the centre-right
coalition in Italy: in fact, a strong commitment to a continuous pro-European guideline is at
work in some sectors of Forza Italia (formally attached to EPP since 2001) as well as in the
small Christian-democratic parties of the centre-right (Ccd-Cdu), whose preferences (uncovered
here because of the small size of the parties) can no doubt be classified as a form of
pro-Europeanism 26 . In other words, the “moderate nucleus” of the coalition would present,
according to the hypothesis, a stronger pro-European commitment, while the more peripheral
24 Much more problematic is the evaluation of other two components of the Ulivo: the greens and the
small party of the Italian Communists, the result of a 1998 split from the new communist party, after
the latter decided to leave the parliamentary majority.
25 Interestingly, we remember that the three main personalities of the centre-left acting on the
European scene are not coming from Pds/ds: Romano Prodi (former centre-left Prime minister and
then President of the European Commission), Giuliano Amato (Prime minister and then vice-President
of the European Convention) and Lamberto Dini (Former Minister of Foreign Affairs and then
representative of the Italian Parliament within the Convention).
26 We are conscious that this affirmation is unverified here. On the other hand, we can argue it both
because of the role of moderate Christian democratic leaders within the EPP (where Pierferdinando
Casini is vice-President) and also for the continuous appeals, from the same leaders to the allies, to
maintain a clear “loyalty to the European commitment”. An evident case was the protection that the
small Christian democratic centre offered to the (non party affiliated) minister of Foreign Affairs
Ruggero, who was forced to leave the cabinet Berlusconi II (January 2002) because of a hard conflict
with other ministers (specially the ones from the Northern League) on European affairs.
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