The European Union and the Communists: Policies of the PCI and the PCP: The practical, ideological and political defeats of the communist left in Italy and Portugal

In Italy and Portugal, the establishment of democratic rule was part of the strategy of the two CPs, which had broad bases in the working classes. The stagnation of the self-organizations of the working classes and the end of the processes of social effervescence led to democratic normality and the internationalization of the economies, liberalizing them. Isolation was the first defeat of the two CPs in the national governments, and the other was the impossibility of advancing with the strategy of reforms towards socialism. The practical and ideological bankruptcy was compounded by the political bankruptcy on the threshold of the EU's implementation and in the face of the terminal crisis of the international communist left, when the PCI decided to disband and the PCP to continue with its orthodoxy.