In the mid ‘50s Italy shows signs of an economic recovery, although one that goes at many different speeds creating a fracture between the North and the South and one that makes the political life more radical than ever. The sources analyzed offer this double perspective: on the one side the government press presents the unification within Europe as a natural extention of the Marshall Plan; on the other, the opposition, that whilst acknowledging the positive aspects of the event, still stresses the unsolved problems such as unemployment, emigration, the political instability, the democratic fragility and the need for new institutional reforms which take into accountability the new European context.