Many of you, including me,  are often talking about Brexit and we ask ourselves, ‘What is Brexit and why did it happen?’. Will it lead to more or less liberty for the UK? Or, however, will it be the end of Great Britain as we know it? If you speak Italian “Brexit la Sfida” written by Daniele Capezzone and Federico Punzi, is a book which can give you some answers.

There are 3 good reasons why you should read this book.

The first one is the quality of the contributions the author collected: through original views, papers and different opinions from experts like David Goodhart, Peter Rough, Allister Heat, Tim Knox, Daniel Hannan MEP, Lord Nigel Lawson, the Adam Smith Institute, Center for Policy Studies, and many others. The volume aims to give a reading of the Brexit vote, after which, a hostile opinion and condemnation of the choices of the people and the British government prevailed in Europe. It happens to be true that the actors inside the Brussels Bubble are unwilling to grasp the implications of the motivations of the British people.

Among them, the dissatisfaction with the EU which is seen as a place of constraints and bureaucratic opacity; the popular desire to talk directly to an accountable political class, to which economic and immigration issues can be addressed; the demand for a Europe that takes into account the diversity and does not pretend to impose a homogeneous cage from Finland to Portugal, against history and geography. On top of all this, the distance between “people” and “experts”, between citizens and the establishment, is increasingly visible.

In the background, there is also the ancient, never-ending antinomy between an Anglo-Saxon world, historically capable of betting on freedom, competition, confrontation between different solutions, and a consolidated tendency of continental Europe to build political and economic consociational systems which are blocked and rigid.

The second one of the two authors, Federico Punzi shares valuable input for discussion on the topic of the future of Europe. In which direction is Europe going? Is Europe going back to national states where Germany and France are prevailing? Which will be the consequences of Brexit for other nations?

Last but not least, the authors are finding a precise challenge for Italy and the South of Europe. Will Italy be united and lead Southern Europe to challenge Brussels’ decisions? And will the bureaucrats in Brussels, and in the member states, take Brexit as a reminder that reforms in Europe are desperately needed? The alternative, they say, will be a slower but irreversible decay for Europe.

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