Europe et gauche européenne : les multiples défis des communistes italiens au moment du lancement de l’eurocommunisme (1969-1977)

This article aims to reflect on the characteristics and contradictions of the European policies and visions of the Italian Communist Party (PCI) in the 1970s. While focusing on the programmes and initiatives of the PCI, the article examines their development in the context of the party’s transnational relations. On the one hand, it underlines the importance of the dialogue with the European social democratic parties. On the other, it examines the relationship between the Italian Communists and their counterparts of the French PCF. In revisiting this much-debated question, we will try to advance an interpretation which is partially different from those that have been proposed so far in historiography and political science. Instead of focusing on the relationship of the two parties to the Soviet ‘centre’, the article maintains that the most important divergences between the PCI and the PCF concerned European questions, relations with other left forces, and the role of supranational organisations. The approach to these questions is indeed decisive for understanding the path followed by the two parties in the following decades, as well as the contradictions and the failure of the project of Eurocommunism.