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Introduction: Italy in the EU—pigmy or giant?1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 January 2016

Sergio Fabbrini  and
Simona Piattoni
Sergio Fabbrini
Affiliation:
Dipartimento di Socologia e Ricerca Sociale, Università di Trento, via Verdi, 26, 38100 Trento
Simona Piattoni
Affiliation:
Dipartimento di Socologia e Ricerca Sociale, Università di Trento, via Verdi, 26, 38100 Trento
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Summary

This introductory article discusses the circumstances under which Italy manages to forge ‘national preferences’ and push them through the European policy-making process. Drawing from the analysis of several policy areas, it concludes that Italy plays a major policy-making role, particularly when it acts as mediator between large countries and small- and medium-sized ones, and when it argues its case according to policy- and EU-appropriate logics. While Italy may not have it ‘its way’ all the time (as no member-state does), it still manages to influence the EU policy-making process more frequently and more significantly than the literature has so far conceded.

Type
Introduction
Information
Modern Italy , Volume 9 , Issue 2: Special Issue: Italy in the EU: pigmy or giant? The role of Italian actors in EU policy-making , November 2004 , pp. 149 - 157
Copyright
Copyright © Association for the study of Modern Italy 

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References

Notes

2. As Alberta Sbragia argues convincingly, in ‘Italy Pays for Europe: Political Leadership, Political Choice, and Institutional Adaptation’, in Cowles, Maria Green, Caporaso, James and Risse, Thomas (eds), Transforming Europe: Europeanization and Domestic Change , Cornell University Press, Ithaca, 2001, pp. 79–96.Google Scholar

3. Fabbrini, Sergio (ed.), L'europeizzazione dell'Italia: l'impatto dell'Unione Europea sulle istituzioni e le politiche italiane , Laterza, Rome-Bari, 2003.Google Scholar

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5. See the forthcoming issue of Journal of European Public Policy , edited by Radaelli, Claudio and Franchino, Fabio.Google Scholar

6. Padoa-Schioppa, Tommaso, Europa forza gentile , II Mulino, Bologna, 2001, especially chapter 3.Google Scholar

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10. Fabbrini, Sergio, ‘Political Change Without Institutional Transformation: What Can We Learn from the Italian Crisis of the 1990s?’, International Political Science Review , 21, 2, 2000, pp. 173–96.Google Scholar

11. For an analysis of this period and for the distinction between crisis and transition, see Fabbrini, Sergio, Tra pressioni e veti: il cambiamento politico in Italia , Laterza, Rome-Bari, 2000.Google Scholar

12. According to data in Eurobarometer 60, published in February 2004, 60 per cent of Italians identify strongly with being Italian and European and 81 per cent are proud or very proud to be Europeans. These are the highest figures in the EU.Google Scholar

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