Germany's view of Italy in the new century: new challenges and old stereotypes

Abstract

Italy's relationship with Germany has undergone substantial changes over the last 20 years. Since 1989, the two countries, traditional allies and partners in the EU and NATO, have experienced a number of tensions. A crucial problem for Germany lies in its incapacity to accept fully Italy's ambitions to be a leading European power. In domestic terms, the perception of Italy has been heavily overshadowed by the figure of Silvio Berlusconi who has allowed familiar stereotypes to survive and impeded a sober analysis of Italy's changed preferences.

Keywords:

• Berlusconi
• political instability
• EU
• NATO
• UN

Notes

Notes

1. Auswärtiges Amt, Staatenimmunität–Deutschland sucht Klärung vor dem Internationalen Gerichtshof, http://www.auswaertiges–amt.de/diplo/de/Aussenpolitik/InternatRecht/081229–igh–klage.html

2. The 27th consultations took place in Meseberg in November 2007, the 28th were held in Trieste in November 2008, while the next meeting is scheduled to take place in April 2010 in Hannover.

3. The search was conducted by using the keyword: ‘Italy’ and ‘Italian’ in the search engine of the Bundestag, Dokumentations–und Informationssystem (DIP): http://dipbt.bundestag.de/dip21.web/bt

4. Before the European elections of 2009, for instance, Chancellor Angela Merkel sent a message of support to Buttiglione's Christian Democrats party congress in Rome in April 2009, see http://www.kas.de/proj/home/home/132/1/webseite_id–6970/index.html

5. The Federazione dei Verdi was part of the alliance Sinistra e Libertà, which received 3.12 % of the votes but failed to gain any seats.

6. The search focused exclusively on political matters. Due to the different tools available within the search engines used, the selection criteria for the FAZ and SZ were stricter than those used for Die Welt and TAZ (the latter were searched via LexisNexis) via the thematic focus ‘Government and Public Administration’, which yielded a higher number of articles than the more direct method used for FAZ and SZ.