Italy and EU Enlargement: A Comparative Analysis of Left and Right Governments.

The first part of the paper is theoretical and aims at identifying two interpretations on the enlargement process of the European Union. The first one in based on a liberal attitude of the decision makers (especially the Commission), trying to apply in a neutral way the economic and political criteria of conditionality to EU enlargement. The second one is founded on a conservative orientation leading to correct those criteria; thus, European governments modify neutrality because of "realist" interests: either patron/client links with candidate states, or security reasons. For example, it seems that some consequences of Kosovo war of 1999 pushed EU to start negotiations with Romania and Bulgaria -which were quite late in economic reforms. Also the recent decision to begin negotiations with Turkey (with many problems concerning political criteria) was influenced by the support of a conservative coalition formed by the USA, the UK and Italy. The Italian governments applied the conservative orientation, based on the support of Romania, Bulgaria, Croatia and Turkey, because all those candidates were perceived as compatible with firms and state interests. That position was supported by the Foreign Affairs minister of the left governments, Dini (since 1996), and by the leaders of the right coalition (since 2001): Berlusconi and Fini. A convergence materialized with the constructivist left, whose post/1989 ideology is strictly anchored to politically correctness and thus with the objective of making equal what is different, by favoring underprivileged actors. Thus enlargement was favored for both economic -redistribution channels of the EU should favor Romania, Bulgaria and Croatia- and cultural -a "plural" Europe, with Islamic Turkey, was strongly encouraged- reasons. Some shy liberal criticism -based on a fair objection to the partial compliance of Turkey to political conditionality criteria- were raised by single politicians of moderate right or left parties (Margherita, Forza Italia, UDC), but were not relevant. Cultural biases against Islamic Turkey were promoted by Bossi's Lega, while the neo-Communists and the Greens objected to Turkish candidature because of their manicheism, with a dichotomous division between the good (the Kurds) and the evil (Turkish armed forces). ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]