Italy in the Council of the European Union: votes and statements

The Council of the European Union is considered to be ‘a consensus machine’. Yet, disagreements still happen at the voting stage, with abstentions, oppositions, and statements defining the positions of national delegations even at the end of long bargaining processes. This article explores the behaviours of Italian representatives in the Council from 1995 to 2019. The analysis uses roll call data to test expectations emerging from the previous comparative literature in the context of this more demanding single-country research design. Amongst the hypotheses, the results confirm that chairing the Council, and the partisanship of governments on the ideological and EU integration dimensions, are systematically associated with various ways in which opposition and dissent are expressed. Furthermore, we find that caretaker cabinets and government heterogeneity also reduce the likelihood of Italian disagreements in the Council.