Publisher's Synopsis
The Arab Springs, with their contradictions and the different results from country to country, have changed the long established balances in Mediterranean, southern, and eastern shore. The prospects are still uncertain and - using the climatic metaphor - oscillate between tumults of spring revival and fears of long winters brought by the Islamic fundamentalism. As of now it is clear, that all the hopes aroused by the basic movements turned out to be excessive and largely disregarded. All this happens in a particularly delicate phase of the construction of Europe as a whole and of the Mediterranean countries of the Old Continent in particular. The sovereign debt problems, revealed during the last years, force the EU to reflect upon itself and to face its contradictions, too long ignored and left unresolved. The risk that the entire Mediterranean area may be politically and economically destabilized is far from theoretical. Introduced by Professor Cosimo Ceccuti and coordinated by Senator Antonio Del Pennino, on December 2, on initiative of the Spadolini Foundation, debated about these subjects: journalists Stefano Folli and Antonio Ferrari, geostrategy experts Giancarlo Elia Valori, Italico Santoro, Silverio Ianniello, Alia K. Nardini, Giorgio Rebuffa, Cosimo Risi, Gabriele Zito, the economist Michele Bagella, the jurist Antonio Serra, the President of the AGCI Rosario Altieri and the Director of the Press Federation Giancarlo Tartaglia. The result has been of a complex picture, rich of opportunities and contradictions: the Mediterranean, according to the speakers, gains back a strategic importance, and begins to look as an area in which delicate balances confront themselves and a decisive game for the global stability has been played. The future structure of the planet, starting with the basic subject of the maintaining of peace, depends on this match.
