Lorenzo Natali e la politica comunitaria: L’”altra Italia” in Europa (1977-1988)

On the eve of the fall of the Wall, the European Community is a mature and evolving reality, already able to compete commercially with the United States and grappling with the complex design of the great Single market. At the same time, it has developed political ambitions, with the first forms of foreign policy coordination between Member States, and the start of the long road towards Economic and Monetary Union.

Lorenzo Natali (1922-1989) is one of the least known protagonists of this story. Since the birth of the Communities with the Treaties of Rome, and in the following thirty years he accompanied with his political career the fundamental steps of European construction, first as a minister and, from the late Seventies, as Italian commissioner in Brussels, the longest in terms of term of office. He and the Directorates-General he leads are responsible for some of the most significant achievements of that political season, from the conclusion of the great enlargement to the South to the implementation of the Community's first environmental policy, ending to the consolidation of a fruitful and equal dialogue between Europe and the global South. This book aims to give a first glimpse of light on his figure and his political action.