From ‘miracle’ to crisis, 1963–1969
The crisis of the system of alliances based on the centrist coalition led by the Christian Democratic Party (DC) began not after the end of the 'economic miracle', but in the middle of it. Towards the end of the 1950s the DC increasingly sought to reach an understanding with the Socialist Party (PSI) whose pact of unity with the Communist Party (PCI) had been rescinded following the events of 1956. The development of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) had a decisive impact in Italy. Full employment had been reached but only in the North, among the male labour force and in the advanced sectors of the economy. In other European countries female employment was on the increase throughout the 1960s. Italy had entered the European Economic Community (EEC) with some evident structural handicaps: constant emigration, scarcity of primary products, particularly sources of energy, low productivity in agriculture and backward technology.