ABSTRACT
Italian attitudes on what is going on right in Europe are very difficult to gauge for a number of reasons. Italians traditionally tend to concentrate their attention very much on domestic issues. There is, for example, the shaky state of the coalition government regarding the transition going on in the main opposition force which is the Communist party in Italy. Concerning East-West integration, the Italian government thinks that the EC must be used as a framework to work out a special association with Eastern countries to manage the partnership in Europe between East and West. A united Germany, again according to the Italian government, should stay in NATO, although with no NATO troops on the Eastern part, which is more or less according to Herr Genscher's scheme on that point. A point that underlines divergence between deeds and facts in Italian foreign policy is protectionism.
