Italy's European Policy After Debt Crisis

As one of the core members of the European Union(EU),Italy's European policy has a decisive impact on the development of the EU.When the European debt crisis broke out in 2009,Italy fell into an economic recession due to serious debt problems.Since then,the interactions between Italy and the EU have focused more on the macroeconomic issues.In the subsequent European refugee crisis,Italy,as a gateway connecting West Asia and North Africa,undertook heavy refugee pressures,resulting its already slow economic growth even worse.The economic recession and the arrival of refugees have been affected people's lives directly.Italy's fiscal and immigration policies jointly reveal the dynamics and tensions between Italy's domestic politics and foreign affairs to the European Union.Not only do they reflect the changes in Italy's European policy,but also imply the traditional features of Italian foreign policy.Therefore,this thesis focuses on Italian policies in the aspects of both finance and refugee/immigration.This thesis first briefly reviews Italy's European policy since the end of World War ?,summarizing the policy preferences and the general trend of its development in terms of whether Italy supports the EU or not.Then,this thesis attends to the fiscal policies and the immigration policies of the three Italian governments from 2014 to 2019.Based on the background and the contents of the policies,this thesis summarizes the characteristics of the policies and compares them with the traditional features before the debt crisis happened.The last chapter analyzes the motivations of Italy's European policy from the three aspects of the system,the state,and the individual.Concerning the fiscal policies,the EU has prescribed austerity policies for Italy to solve its high-debt problems.The austerity policies would inevitably inhibit Italy's economic growth.All the three Italian governments committed to achieving a balance between austerity policies and economic growth.Their fundamental approach is to promote domestic structural reforms.However,due to the strong resistance of domestic politics,such a balance is difficult to achieve.As for the immigration policies,the refugee crisis has overwhelmed the EU member states,the EU's refugee distribution plan has also been paralyzed.The EU border countries,like Italy,have been overburdened.Italy has spared no efforts to promote the promulgation of the EU-level common policies,and established some cooperation mechanisms,whereas little success has been achieved in the most urgent task of distributing the arrived refugees.As a result,Italy can only solve the problems on domestic level by strictly controlling its border and deepening the cooperation with the sources of the migrating refugees.These two aspects of the problems directly stimulated the development of populism and Euroscepticism in Italy,which became the immediate cause of the frequent conflicts between the Italian government and the EU.Yet such confrontation does not mean that Italy's European policy has undergone a fundamental change.The changeableness and the polarization of the policy attitudes are the conventional features of Italian diplomacy.Moreover,a greater emphasis on national interests and the strengthening of Eurosceptical tendencies are the common features of the current European politics.Italy's core interests have always remained within the EU framework,which determines the Italian government's support for European integration will not change rashly.It has not changed so far,either.