The UE turn of a populist movement: at the roots of the Five-star Movement’s foreign-policy agenda

ABSTRACT Until its success at the election of 2013, the Five-star Movement had not paid a great deal of attention to foreign policy. In 2017, in preparation for the election the following year, the Movement’s MPs began collating what they considered the most relevant policy proposals in order to draft a new electoral programme. Using the Movement’s web platform, Rousseau, the M5s asked registered members to choose the three most important issues of foreign policy from a list of ten. The aim of this article is to see how the Movement defined its foreign policy. This analysis helps us to understand the EU turn that has characterized the foreign-policy agenda of the Movement in recent years. Having embraced the possibility of Italy’s exit from the Eurozone in 2013, the Movement today appears to be in favour of strengthening the European institutions.