The article is devoted to a consideration of those social political discrepancies (clivages) that exist in contemporary Italy as well as to the crisis events caused by them. The authors briefly summorise the Lipset-Rokkan theory of social political divisions, its development and usage by other researchers. The article shows the interdependence between the Italian internal policy crisis and the foreign policy crisis that manifests itself within the Italy-EU relationship. The authors underline the specifics of the history of development of Italian state, pay attention to the regional division between the North and the South, the ideological and political collision between the Left and the Right, as well as to the conflict between fascists and antifascists that stay important for the contemporary Italian society. The authors also analyze the phenomenon of Italian populism, which goes beyond the parties because of the crisis of the traditional party system and voters’ disappointment with classical parties. The authors mention the personalist character of populism. Among the crisis events they emphasise the migration crisis that not only caused new political divisions both inside Italy and in Italian-European relations, but also stimulated deepening of already existing contradictions. The result of crisis in Italy-EU relations and Italian society’s disappointment in the EU has become the growth of Euroscepticism, that is taken in a broader pan-European context. Apart from domestic policy and foreign policy divisions between the Yellow-Green coalitionary government and its opponents in Italy and the EU, there are also contradictions inside the government itself, which are caused by the competition - sometimes clear, sometimes hidden - between those political forces that formed the government. These contradictions has created additional risks in unstable condition of the ruling Yellow-Green coalition, because it has been under the threat of disintegration non only because of pressure of external opponents, but also due to intensification of interior conflicts.