The historical origins of Euroscepticism in Italy

Italian historiography, with few exceptions, has paid little attention to ”Euro-opposition “. To a large extent, this is due to the conviction, rooted in an influential strand of historiography, that European integration fits smoothly in the direction of the historical movement and that its advances are a result of the dialectic tension between Europeanism, the element of objective progress, and anti-Europeanism, the conservation factor, the understanding of whose internal structure and variety of reasons has substantially been given up in order to systematically refer to it as an expression of anachronistic nationalism or sterile sovereignism. Having underestimated the antagonistic positions or having considered them as mere futile resistance to a teleologically interpreted process has caused, among other things, a delay in the reflection on the most suitable keys to the understanding of its origins and development. The book “Contro l’Europa? I diversi scetticismi verso l’integrazione europea” (Against Europe? The different types of skepticism toward European integration, Il Mulino 2016), curated by Daniele Pasquinucci and Luca Verzichelli, testifies a significant shift in perspective. Intercepting a line of research already relatively consolidated in international political science research, it focuses the discussion on the issue of “criticism of Europe.” The workshop will start from this book to discuss the heuristic limits of the term “Euroscepticism”, and then explore the historical origins of the various forms of rejection, disagreement, criticism and/or opposition to European integration that occurred in Italy from the fifties of the twentieth century to the present day.