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Italy, officially the Italian Republic is a
unitary parliamentary republic in Southern
Europe. To the north, Italy borders France,
Switzerland, Austria, and Slovenia, and is
roughly delimited by the Alpine watershed,
enclosing the Po Valley and the Venetian
Plain. To the south, it consists of the entirety
of the Italian Peninsula and the two biggest
Mediterranean islands of Sicily and Sardinia,
in addition to many other smaller islands.
Italy covers an area of 301,338 km2 (116,347
sq mi) and has a largely temperate climate.
With 61 million inhabitants, it is the 5th most
populous country in Europe. Among the
world's most developed countries, Italy has
the 4th-largest economy in the European
Union, 3rd in the Eurozone and 9th in the
world by GDP (IMF, 2012).
In the years that followed, Italy abolished
the monarchy, reinstated democracy, and
enjoyed a prolonged economic boom, thus
becoming one of the most developed nations
in the world with the fifth largest economy
by nominal GDP by the early 1990s.
Italy was a founding member of NATO in 1949
and one of the Inner Six of the European
Community in 1957, which became the EU in
1993. It is part of the Schengen Area, and has
been a member of the Eurozone since 1999.
Italy is considered to be a major European
power able to exert its influence on a global
scale with membership in prominent
institutions or groups such as the UN, the EU,
the NATO, the OECD, the OSCE, the DAC, the
WTO, the G4, G6, G7, G8, G10, G20, the
Union for the Mediterranean, the Latin
Union, the Council of Europe, the Central
European Initiative and the Uniting for
Consensus. Italy currently maintains the
world's tenth-largest nominal defence budget
and is a participant in the NATO nuclear
sharing policy.