Michela Ponzani. 1945: A NEW WORLD ORDER

'Freedom of thought and speech, freedom from fear and want, freedom from want'. Franklin Delano Roosevelt thus announced the principles of the Atlantic Charter. A new world order in which the civil rights inherited from nineteenth-century liberal constitutionalism are combined with a dimension of social justice and equality. Concepts which, at that very time in Italy, inspired a group of young anti-fascists in exile on the island of Ventotene – young people capable of imagining a Europe founded on the values of justice and freedom. A legacy that is all the more important today, as the return of war to Europe has shattered the illusion of a just and lasting peace.