Europe and the Mediterranean

The Italian national identity, in its purely political dimension, has been characterized by a very precise choice: that of anchoring firmly to Europe, seen as a model of economic and civil development as well as political, a decision reaffirmed by the participation alongside the Entente powers during the First World War and by the founding participation in the Atlantic Alliance in a united Europe. This direction, however, was accompanied by a sort of Mediterranean Sonderweg, sometimes unrealistic, sometimes confused, often uncertain between the evocation of an imagined past and a perspective on a less narrow and predetermined future.