Hanging Between Hope and Fear: Italians at the Heart of International Crisis

Italy’s public opinion seems more open and daring of its political elites on some hot issues of the international agenda. Although increasingly concerned about the economic context and for the future of the European integration process, Italians seems rather optimist about stabilizing the situation in Libya and strongly in favor of promoting democracy in the Arab world, even if this entails the risk of greater short-term instability. Divided over the notion that the EU should gain greater authority over member states’ economic and budgetary policies, Italians are among the most unsatisfied, at the European level, of the government’s management of the economic crisis and of the conflict in Libya. These are some of the outcomes of the survey Transatlantic Trends 2011, a project of the German Marshall Fund of the United States and the Compagnia di San Paolo.

Earlier version: "Italians: Sober but committed transatlanticists and Europeanists", in GMF Blog, 16 September 2011.