Europe and the Right in Italy: an ambivalent relationship

This article focuses on the three main parties of the centre-right coalition, namely, Forza Italia, the National Alliance and the Northern League during the period 1994-2002, with a view to analyzing and explaining their outlook on Europe and to elucidating how this has affected Italy's EU policy during the negotiations of the Constitutional Treaty. It is argued that Euroscepticism has emerged among parties of the right in Italy, albeit this pattern has not been uniform, nor has it had watershed effects on Italy's EU policy. During the period 1994-2004, the Northern League moved from pro-European attitudes to Euroscepticism, whereas the National Alliance moved in the opposite direction, abandoning, at least formally, its past Euroscepticism. Forza Italia's stance is very fluid, mainly because the attitude of its leader towards European integration is unclear. These trends, which break with the pro-European outlook of governing political parties in the First Republic, need to be contextualized by considering domestic institutions, historical legacies and public opinion attitudes, all factors that explain the overall continuity of Italy's trajectory in the EU, despite the change in the domestic politics of Euroscepticism.