EU: Partecipative Europe. Following Altiero Spinelli’s footsteps

Pier Virgilio Dastoli, director of the European Commission?s representation in Italy, calls for a coalition of real innovators in the tradition set out by one of the EU?s founding fathers.

For over fifty years Altiero Spinelli was a politician with an only cause. Far from being a hazy ideologist with an unbending logic through which to interpret the state of the world and with which to determine the means and timing of his own actions, he adamantly pursued the construction of a political Europe. A Europe that was born out of the democratic radicalism that emerged as a feature of the resistance to Nazi-fascism and that looked towards the future of a globalized planet and a continent that was no longer divided.

Spinelli admitted that the federalist idea, ?his? federalist idea, was somehow estranged from the political culture and language of the times. And yet it is ?his? federalism that remained and remains at the heart of 20th Century European political culture, once the great European political movements of the previous century had definitely given up on Internationalism, Universalism and cosmopolitism in order to chase the illusion of solving supranational problems with the tools that national powers avail of.

A true man of politics, Spinelli created the bases for the most important common social policies in status nascendi (culture, research, industry, environment) as a member of the European Commission. As member of the European Parliament he then created the bases for political infrastructure with the European Union Treaty project in 1984.

In both of these cases his actions highlighted the intrinsic weakness of Jean Monnet?s philosophy that claimed that ?in the long term bureaucracy will turn out to be stronger than politics, and that one day and some how a European political superstructure would emerge from the European administration of concrete interests?.

Spinelli had to overcome a great deal of resistance in his parliamentary activities from different political groups. Most of the popular groups (except for the Italian demo-Christians, Cassanmagmago and Gaiotti de Biase) were at first irritated by the intrusion of an ex-communist into the European field of action which had been frequented by moderate political parties for decades. Then there were the French socialists who were tied to an archaic vision of the exclusive nature of national democracies, a part of the German social-democrats and liberals who were convinced that European integration should proceed at a slow pace imposed by national governments and the British conservatives who were for the most part overly convinced of the superiority of the English model. Even in the ?communist & co.? group, to whom he subscribed independently, his almost-constituent action was met with sarcastic comments such as ?Altiero has gone out to hunt butterflies?. It was only the interventions by part of Enrico Berlinguer and Giorgio Napolitano and the support of Guido Fanti, Aldo Bonaccini, Carlo Galluzzi, Felice Ippolito, Silvio Leonardi and Giovanni Papapietro that saved the Italian side from making yet another historical mistake.

Despite this, the ?Crocodile Club? (a group of federalist deputies) was at first made up of deputies from across the political spectrum and included radicals, socialists, social democrats, liberalists and conservatives. Even though these members were a minority, in the sense that they were not backed by their parties, Spinelli was convinced that this innovative minority would turn out to be the winners in the context of the European Parliament.

The 1984 project, that was, in the end, approved by a great majority, opened a fruitful political season that went on for more than twenty years and that culminated in 2004 with the Treaty that established a Constitution for Europe. Piece by piece the 1984 project was integrated into communitarian treaties in the five intergovernmental conferences that took place between 1985 and 2004. But the problems involved in transferring to a European government issues with a European extent still remain and will not be solved by the sixth intergovernmental conference that will be held by the end of the year.

After the long night in Brussels on the 22 June, where a number of countries (like Britain, Czechoslovakia, Holland and Poland) who Romano Prodi described as acting as a ?break?, confronted a confused army of ?willing countries?, many people are lulled by the illusion that the strengthened cooperative relationships within the Euro-zone will make European politics fall from the sky.

It is clear that strengthened cooperation alone will not solve the problem of governing Europe. It is also clear that to reach such an objective, in Spinelli?s federalist vision, more time and different means will be needed. Drawing up yet another Convention, following the model that was used in 2000 in the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union and in 2002-2003 for the Constitutional Treaty, risks to be a failure as the Convention presided on by Giscard was born in absence of democratic legitimacy and because of the powerful Club of Foreign ministers who can blackmail the Executive Committee at any time.

Further, the idea of entrusting a founding mandate has never found consensus among national governments nor among national political classes. In actual fact, the European Parliament, except for its brief ?Spinellian? era, has never actually claimed such a role.

In many of our countries, constitutional continuity has been put in the hands of assemblies directly voted by the people and with a mandate ? limited both in its content and in time ? to establish a social contract.

It is only in this way that parties and candidates will feel committed to explaining to their citizens their vision of Europe?s future, which is not what happened in the all of the European Parliamentary elections that have taken place from 1979 to 2004.

It is only in this way that a great debate about Europe will be opened, on European policies and on the organisation of a public European space, offering organised civil society an extraordinary opportunity to participate and to influence.

Isn?t it perhaps civil society ? the civil society that accompanied the process that lead to the Treaty of Nice and that watched over the European Convention?s works with great scepticism ? that asks for an ad hoc assembly to be elected parallel to the European Parliamentary elections on the 14th June 2009 and to then give European citizens the right to express their opinion in a supranational referendum?

For this reason, suggests Spinelli, a vast coalition of pro-European forces is needed. One that steps beyond traditional boundaries between nations and parties to create a volonté général in favour of the Community and prepared to innovate rather than to conserve.

Pier Virgilio Dastoli is director of the European Commission?s representation in Italy: http://ec.europa.eu/italia/en/index.html

To contact him please write to: staff@vitaeurope.org