| Summary: | Europe is affected by the development in of a neo-regionalism based upon riches regions interests, of which Italy, with its « septentrional question » is an example. It is a real problem for the geography as a scientific discipline. On one hand, the neo-regionalism itself fits in with a more general process, which is the regional -or federal- mutation of the Italian State, characterised itself by a specific geography, based upon retroactions between the 20 italian regions, basis of the institutional regionalisation process, the North-South disparities of development, and the electoral geography of the Lega Nord. On the other hand, the territorial referencies which are put in evidence by this neo-regionalism (Padania, etc.) put the the geography at risk of instrumentation. Geography can nontheless be useful in these debates, using the classical approaches of the « regional geography », particularly in matters of spatial organisation, and even more, using its capacity to describe the news articulations of scales and territorial levels, from local to global. On this point of view, the regional question is also the occasion for a revival of the regional geography and of interactions with others social and political sciences.
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