Italy was a founding member of the European Community—now the European Union (EU). Italy was admitted to the United Nations in 1955 and is a member and strong supporter of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade/World Trade Organization (GATT/WTO), the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), and the Council of Europe. Its recent turns in the rotating Presidency of international organisations include the Conference for Security and Co-operation in Europe (CSCE), the forerunner of the OSCE, in 1994; G8; and the EU in 2001 and from July to December 2003.
Italy supports the United Nations and its international security activities. Italy deployed troops in support of UN peacekeeping missions in Somalia, Mozambique, and East Timor and provides support for NATO and UN operations in Bosnia, Kosovo and Albania. Italy deployed over 2,000 troops to Afghanistan in support ofOperation Enduring Freedom (OEF) in February 2003. Italy still supports international efforts to reconstruct and stabilize Iraq, but it has withdrawn its military contingent of some 3,200 troops as of November 2006, maintaining only humanitarian workers and other civilian personnel. In August 2006 Italy sent about 2,450 soldiers to Lebanon for the United Nations' peacekeeping mission UNIFIL.[20] Furthermore, since 2 February 2007 an Italian, Claudio Graziano, is the commander of the UN force in the country.
Military
| “ | Italy rejects war as an instrument of aggression against the freedoms of others peoples and as a means for settling international controversies; it agrees, on conditions of equality with other states, to the limitations of sovereignty necessary for an order that ensures peace and justice among Nations; it promotes and encourages international organizations having such ends in view. | ” |
—Article 11 of Italian Constitution | ||
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The Italian armed forces are under the command of the Supreme Defence Council, presided over by thePresident of the Italian Republic. In 2008 the military had 186,798 personnel on active duty, along with 114,778 in the national gendarmerie.[21] Italy shares nuclear weapons with NATO, in the form of US nuclear weapons leased to the country. Total military spending in 2007 was $33.1 billion, equal to 1.8% of national GDP.[22]
The Italian armed forces are divided into four branches:
Army
The Italian Army (Esercito Italiano) is the ground defence force of the Italian Republic. It has recently become a professional all-volunteer force of active-duty personnel, numbering 109,703 in 2008. Its best-known combat vehicles are the Dardo infantry fighting vehicle, the Centauro tank destroyer and the Arietetank, and among its aircraft the Mangusta attack helicopter, recently deployed in UN missions. TheEsercito Italiano also has at its disposal a large number of Leopard 1 and M113 armored vehicles.
Navy
The Italian Navy (Marina Militare) in 2008 had a strength of 43,882 and ships of every type, such as aircraft carriers, destroyers, modern frigates, submarines, amphibious ships, and other smaller ships such as oceanographic research ships[23] The Marina Militare is now equipping itself with a bigger aircraft carrier, (the Cavour), new destroyers, submarines and multipurpose frigates. In modern times the Italian Navy, being a member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), has taken part in many coalition peacekeeping operations around the world.
Air Force
The Italian Air Force in 2008 has a strength of 43,882 and operates 585 aircraft, including 219 combat jets and 114 helicopters. As a stopgap and as replacement for leased Tornado ADV interceptors, the AMI has leased 30 F-16A Block 15 ADF and four F-16B Block 10 Fighting Falcons, with an option for more. The coming years also will see the introduction of 121 EF2000 Eurofighter Typhoons, replacing the leased F-16 Fighting Falcons. Further updates are foreseen in the Tornado IDS/IDT and AMX fleets. A transport capability is guaranteed by a fleet of 22 C-130Js and Aeritalia G.222s of which 12 are being replaced with the newly developed G.222 variant called the C-27J Spartan.
Gendarmerie
The Carabinieri are the gendarmerie and military police of Italy, providing the republic with a national police service. At the Sea Islands Conference of the G8 in 2004, the Carabinieri was given the mandate to establish a Center of Excellence for Stability Police Units (CoESPU) to spearhead the development of training and doctrinal standards for civilian police units attached to international peacekeeping missions.[24]
Administrative divisions
Italy is subdivided into 20 regions (regioni, singular regione). Five of these regions have a special autonomous status that enables them to enact legislation on some of their local matters; these are marked by an asterisk (*) in the table below. The country is further divided into 109 provinces (province) and 8,100 municipalities (comuni).
Region  | Capital | Area (km²) | Population |
|---|---|---|---|
| Abruzzo | L'Aquila | 10,794 | 1,324,000 |
| Aosta Valley* | Aosta | 3,263 | 126,000 |
| Apulia | Bari | 19,362 | 4,076,000 |
| Basilicata | Potenza | 9,992 | 591,000 |
| Calabria | Catanzaro | 15,080 | 2,007,000 |
| Campania | Naples | 13,595 | 5,811,000 |
| Emilia-Romagna | Bologna | 22,124 | 4,276,000 |
| Friuli-Venezia Giulia* | Trieste | 7,855 | 1,222,000 |
| Lazio | Rome | 17,207 | 5,561,000 |
| Liguria | Genoa | 5,421 | 1,610,000 |
| Lombardy | Milan | 23,861 | 9,642,000 |
| Marche | Ancona | 9,694 | 1,553,000 |
| Molise | Campobasso | 4,438 | 320,000 |
| Piedmont | Turin | 25,399 | 4,401,000 |
| Sardinia* | Cagliari | 24,090 | 1,666,000 |
| Sicily* | Palermo | 25,708 | 5,030,000 |
| Tuscany | Florence | 22,997 | 3,677,000 |
| Trentino-Alto Adige* | Trento | 13,607 | 1,007,000 |
| Umbria | Perugia | 8,456 | 884,000 |
| Veneto | Venice | 18,391 | 4,832,000 |
Demographics
Population
At the end of 2008, the Italian population surpassed 60 million.[25] Italy currently has the fourth-largest population in the European Union and the 23rd-largest population worldwide. Italy's population density, at 199.2 persons per square kilometre, is the fifth highest in the European Union. The highest density is inNorthern Italy, as that one-third of the country contains almost half of the total population. After World War II, Italy enjoyed a prolonged economic boom which caused a major rural exodus to the cities, and at the same time transormed the nation from a massive emigration country to a net immigrant-receiving country. High fertility persisted until the 1970s, when it plunged below the replacement rates, so that as of 2008, one in five Italians was over 65 years old.[26] Despite this, thanks mainly to the massive immigration of the last two decades, in the 2000s Italy saw a crude birth rates growth (especially in the northern regions) for the first time in many years.[27] The total fertility rate also significantly grew in the past few years, thanks both to rising births in foreign born and Italian women, as it climbed to 1.41 children per woman in 2008 compared to 2005 when it sat at 1.32.[28]
Cities and metropolitan areas
| Rank | City | Location | Pop. | Rank | City | Location | Pop. | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Rome | Lazio | 2,722,907 | 11 | Venice | Veneto | 270,055 | |||
| 2 | Milan | Lombardy | 1,294,797 | 12 | Verona | Veneto | 265,795 | |||
| 3 | Naples | Campania | 963,522 | 13 | Messina | Sicily | 243,315 | |||
| 4 | Turin | Piedmont | 909,193 | 14 | Padua | Veneto | 211,632 | |||
| 5 | Palermo | Sicily | 659,623 | 15 | Trieste | Friuli-Venezia Giulia | 205,466 | |||
| 6 | Genoa | Liguria | 611,556 | 16 | Taranto | Apulia | 194,042 | |||
| 7 | Bologna | Emilia-Romagna | 374,561 | 17 | Brescia | Lombardy | 190,809 | |||
| 8 | Florence | Tuscany | 365,744 | 19 | Reggio Calabria | Calabria | 185,602 | |||
| 9 | Bari | Apulia | 320,676 | 18 | Prato | Tuscany | 185,193 | |||
| 10 | Catania | Sicily | 296,816 | 20 | Modena | Emilia-Romagna | 181,704 | |||
| 2008 ISTAT estimates | ||||||||||
According to Fondazione Censis (Convivere nelle mega cities, in Rapporto annuale 2008, pp. 19–20-21-22-23.[29]) the largest Metroplexs in Italy are:
| N° | Metroplex/ Metropolitan area | Population | Area (in km²) | Density (people/km²) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Milan metropolitan area (Lombardy mega region) | 8.047.125 | 8.362,1 | 965,6 |
| 2 | Naples metropolitan area-Salerno | 4.996.084 | 3.841,7 | 1.300,5 |
| 3 | Rome metropolitan area | 4.339.112 | 4.766,3 | 910,4 |
| 4 | Venice-Padova-Verona (Veneto mega region) | 3.267.420 | 6.679,6 | 489,2 |
| 5 | Bari-Taranto-Lecce (Low adriatic linear system) | 2.603.831 | 6.127,7 | 424,9 |
| 6 | Rimini-Pesaro-Ancona (High adriatic linear system) | 2.359.068 | 5.404,8 | 436,5 |
| 7 | Turin metropolitan area | 1.997.975 | 1.976,8 | 1.010,7 |
| 8 | Greater Bologna-Piacenza | 1.944.401 | 3.923,6 | 495,6 |
| 9 | Florence-Pisa-Siena | 1.760.737 | 3.795,9 | 629.8 |
| 10 | Messina-Catania-Siracusa (Eastern Sicilian linear system) | 1.693.173 | 2.411,7 | 702,1 |
Recognised ethnic minorities
Several ethnic groups are legally recognised and the following minority languages are recognised as co-official languages, as per region:
French in Aosta (even though in that region actually franco-provencal language is spoken),
Ladin: in some communities of Trentino-Alto Adige/South Tirol
Slovene: in provinces of Trieste and Gorizia of the region Venezia Giulia
German: in the province of Bolzano
In these regions official documents are bilingual (trilingual in Ladino communities), or upon request either in Italian or the co-official language only. Traffic signs are also multilingual, except in Valle d'Aosta where toponyms are mostly only in French. Education is possible in minority languages where such schools are operating.
Immigrants
The number of foreigners counted in the resident population is continuously increasing: at the end of 2007 they were 3,432,651 (5.8% of total population). In relative terms the increase has been of 16.8% in the last year, 122% in the last 6 years.[30] Since the expansion of the European Union, the most recent wave of migration has been from surrounding European nations, particularly Eastern Europe, and increasingly Asia, replacing North Africa as a major source of migrants. Some 625,287 Romanians are officially registered as living in Italy, replacing Albanians and Moroccans as the largest ethnic minority group,[31] but unofficial estimates put the actual number of Romanians at double that figure or perhaps even more.[32] As of 2007, migrants came from Eastern Europe (52.02%), North Africa (16.17%), Asia (16.08%), the Americas (8.5%) and sub-Saharan Africa (7.06%).[1]
| Nationality | Population | % of total* |
|---|---|---|
| Italian | 56,186,639 | 94.2% |
| Romanian | 625,278 | 1.05% |
| North African | 555,376 | 0.93% |
| Albanian | 401,949 | 0.67% |
| Chinese | 156,619 | 0.26% |
| Ukrainian | 132,718 | 0.22% |
| Asian (non-Chinese) | 395,466 | 0.66% |
| South American | 276,101 | 0.46% |
| Sub-Saharan African | 242,621 | 0.41% |
| Other | 648,523 | 1.09% |
| * Percentage of total Italy population | ||
The Italian diaspora
Italy became a country of mass emigration soon after the national reunification process in the late 1800s. Between 1898 and 1914, the peak years of Italian diaspora, approximately 750,000 Italians emigrated each year.[33] Italian communities once thrived in the former African colonies of Eritrea (nearly 100,000 at the beginning of World War II),[34] Somalia and Libya (150,000 Italians settled in Libya, constituting about 18% of the total population).[35] All of Libya's Italians were expelled from the North African country in 1970.[36] In the decade after World War II, up to 350,000 ethnic Italians left Yugoslavia (see Istrian exodus).[37] Large numbers of people with full or significant Italian ancestry are currently found in Brazil (25 million),[38]Argentina (20 million),[39] United States (17.8 million),[40] Uruguay (1.5 million),[41] Canada (1.4 million),[42]Venezuela (900,000)[43] and Australia (800,000).[44]
Religion
| Italy religiosity | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| religion | percent | |||
| Christianity | 90% | |||
| Irreligion | 7% | |||
| Islam | 2% | |||
| Others | 1% | |||
Roman Catholicism is by far the largest religion in the country, although the Catholic Church is no longer officially the state religion. Fully 87.8% of Italians identified themselves as Roman Catholic,[45] although only about one-third of these described themselves as active members (36.8%). Other Christian groups in Italy include more than 700,000 Eastern Orthodox Christians including 180,000 Greek Orthodox,[46] 550,000 Pentecostals and Evangelicals(0.8%), of whom 400,000 are members of the Assemblies of God, 235,685 Jehovah's Witnesses (0.4%),[47] 30,000 Waldensians,[48] 25,000 Seventh-day Adventists, 22,000Mormons, 15,000 Baptists (plus some 5,000 Free Baptists), 7,000 Lutherans, 4,000Methodists (affiliated with the Waldensian Church).[49] The country's oldest religious minority is the Jewish community, comprising roughly 45,000 people. It is no longer the largest non-Christian group. As a result of immigration from other parts of the world, some 825,000Muslims[50] (1.4% of the total population) live in Italy, though only 50,000 are Italian citizens. In addition, there are 50,000 Buddhists[51][52]70,000 Sikh[53] and 70,000 Hindus in Italy.
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