FOR Eleonora Ossola, one of an estimated 600,000 Italians who live in Britain, Thursday’s vote to leave the European Union came as a personal blow. “It is as if your mother were to tell you to get out of the house,” said Ms Ossola, who manages Italian Kingdom Radio, a station serving the country’s Italian community. Millions of Europeans felt a similar sense of disorientation and anxiety. For the first time, a continent engaged for decades in the world’s most ambitious project of international integration saw one of its largest countries decide to quit. Sigmar Gabriel, Germany’s vice-chancellor and leader of its Social Democratic Party, summed it up in a tweet: “Damn. A bad day for Europe.”
The shocked reactions of many European leaders suggested they had not fully absorbed the possibility of a vote for Brexit. Angela Merkel, Germany’s chancellor, called a crisis meeting of parliamentary leaders and cabinet members. In Rome, the Italian prime minister, Matteo Renzi, convened an emergency meeting of ministers and scrapped a scheduled summit of his party’s leaders. France’s president, François Hollande, held a long emergency...Continue reading
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