2011-11-05

Will Italy break apart?

There's a north-south divide in Europe and on in Italy too. As in Belgium, there is already some groundwork laid for secession in Italy, so it is one of the more likely places that could see political devolution.

Arrivederci, Roma
For the austerity demanded of Italy to deal with its debt crisis is adding kindling to secessionist fires in the north, where the Lega Nord of Umberto Bossi, third largest party in Italy, seeks to lead Lombardy, Piedmont and Veneto, with the cities of Turin, Milan and Venice, out of Italy into a new nation — Padania.
The north has long resented Rome, Naples and Sicily, seeing them as lazier and less industrious. Bossi, who calls himself “Braveheart,” after the Scottish hero of the Mel Gibson movie, sees northern people as Celts who are ethnically different and separate from the rest of Italy. The Northern League belief that people of Southern Italy caused their debt crisis, bringing on austerity, mirrors the belief of much of Northern Europe that Italy and Greece do not deserve to be bailed out.

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