GUIDELINES OF THE EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT CONCERNING THE ACHIEVEMENT OF EUROPEAN UNION

by Altiero Spinelli

SUMMARY: The European Parliament examines for the first time in the House the work carried out by the new Committee on Institutional Affairs, concerning the general approach to achieving European union.

After the vote of 9 July 1981 and conclusion of the negotiations of the political groups, the Committee on Institutional Affairs sat at Brussels on 27 June 1982, appointing Mr Ferri (previously President of the Legal Affairs Committee) as President, Mr ' Jonker (Netherland's Christian Democrat), Mr Nord (Netherlands Liberal) and Mr Pannella (Italian Radical) as Vice-Presidents, and Spinelli as co-ordinating rapporteur.

On the basis of a working document prepared by Spinelli and after hearing representatives of the economic and social authorities and the Community institutions, the Committee on Institutional Affairs approves, at its meeting on 26 May 1982 - with 31 votes in favour and 2 abstentions - the general approach discussed now by the Assembly.

The motion by the Committee on Institutional Affairs is approved by the House on 6 July 1982 with 258 votes in favour, 37 against and 21 abstentions. In "Speeches in European Parliament, 1976-1986", Pier Virgilio Dastoli editor. (EP, 5 July 1982)

Mr President, it would have been difficult to imagine a more suitable time to hold a parliamentary debate on the guidelines to be given to the Committee on Institutional Affairs for its further work.

What we are now witnessing on the international and Community scene demonstrates with appalling clarity the profound contradiction between what we will have to do and what we are able to do.

First, let us dwell briefly on the role of the Community in world politics. For decades we allowed the principal responsibility for our destiny in this regard to remain in the hands of our American ally, adopting an auxiliary role and being content to pursue, in the shadow of American international policy, a European commercial policy, a modest policy of cooperation for development and a search for a precarious intra-Community monetary stability, with occasional statements of intent in relation to various events.

This convenient abdication, however, is no longer possible. The course of events, which I will not describe here since it is well known to everyone, has brought us to a point where not one or other of the Community countries but all of them together urgently need to assume new, great and serious responsibilities. These responsibilities concern our contribution to peace, to security, to the proper and productive management of alliances, to the freedom of international trade, to monetary stability, to a new world economic order which firmly binds the recovery of our more advanced economics to growth in the less advanced countries.

In our countries there is a broad and fundamental agreement on the need to assume these new responsibilities. This awareness, however, is accompanied by many uncertainties, contradictions, lapses, moments of resignation.

It is perfectly natural that within the context of a general agreement there should be nuances and variations from one country to another and from one party to another within each separate country. It would be strange indeed if this were not the case. What we lack is an adequate European institutional system able to mould the common feeling into a common political will through a joint effort to find the necessary compromises; a system able to create a broad and reliable consensus around the common will and ensure the necessary continuity in international action.

The methods so far employed by the countries of the Community have included initiatives by one or other of the Member States, taken in the belief and sometimes the ligitimate belief - that the country in question was giving practical effect to a frame of mind shared by all. They have included intergovernmental agreements laboriously reached through so-called political cooperation or intergovernmental monetary cooperation. On issues concerning commercial policy there has been recourse to the complicated procedure laid down in Article 113 of the Treaty of Rome, but it is a noteworthy fact that recently, on the first occasion when the application of this article had strong political implications, the failure of two Member States to comply with the Community decision was tolerated.

One has only to consider these chaotic methods employed to deal with the serious problems of the European presence on the world scene to understand that it is impossible for us to be satisfied with them much longer. Indeed, there is a great danger that the very meaning of our Community in the context of world politics will dissolve in the face of these inconsistencies, and that each of our countries will return to the pursuit of the delusion of anachronistic national sovereignty.

The picture is not different if we shift our gaze from world scene to the Community one. During the great development of the 50's and 60's the treaties establishing the Community, together with their commitments, their supporting institutions and the laws and policies derived form them, did fail in some areas and were affected by certain institutional distortions, but they were on the whole adequate to perform the central task of the Community and made a considerable contribution to its development. Thanks to the rules of the Common Market, an unprecedented degree of interdependence and integration among the countries of the Community was attained.

In the 70's, however, and even more so in the early 80's, the picture changed completely. Unemployment, inflation, hight energy costs, structural inflexibility, decreasing competitiveness on the world market and acute regional imbalances began to take their toll. The ecological crisis, which threatens the proper relationship of man with nature, became more acute, as did the crisis of the quality of life, which threatens the proper relationship of man with his fellows and flaws the democratic consensus of which we were so proud. All of these are the new ills now shared by all the countries which make up the European Community. But these ills strike to a different degree and in different ways in each of them. In each country our governments, and with them the political forces - the governmental ones no less than those of the opposition are desperately struggling against all these ills. I say 'desperately', because in nearly every case coherent action at the national level alone is either impossible - because i

t needs to be completed by converging and compatible action by the other countries to which we are most closely bound, that is, the other countries of the Community - or possible only at the cost of destroying a greater or lesser degree of interdependence with these other countries. The Community, which should guarantee this convergence and compatibility and, when necessary, assume direct responsibility for action on the European level, has neither the necessary authority nor the instituions suitable for dealing with these problems.

For this reason we have a Commission which promises great programmes and then does not even dare to elaborate them because it fears they will not be approved; we have a European Council which outlines great objectives and then allows the Councils of Ministers, prisoners all of ten different national ways of thinking, to obscure these objectives and let them melt away; we have a Parliament which solemnly approves great resolutions on hunger, on own resources, on the better functioning of the present institutions and so on, but must then resign itself to having its resolutions ignored and never put into effect.

These are the reasons which necessitate a reform of the Community and of the para-Community institutions of Political Cooperation and the EMS.

The brief summary just made of the great internal and external tasks facing the Community should be more than sufficient to answer once and for all the criticism that the development of the Community in the direction of an ever more meaningful European Union demands not so much institutional reforms as a common political will.

It is obvious that at the beginning of every development of a stronger union there must be a sense of a shared destiny, a 'destin partagé', a feeling of 'togetherness'. The very fact that we in this Assembly, elected by our fellow citizens in each of our countries, have for years been able to hold discussions, to join together in defining aspirations, plans, demands, to understand one another even when we see things differently, proves that this common political ground exists.

So that this feeling may be translated into a common political will, however and by these words I mean a decision to carry out joint acti on - it is essential that there should be democratic institutions with a European background representing a consensus on the part of both the citizens and the Member States, that there should be parliamentary institutions for European legislation, that there should be an executive institution to guarantee that European law is respected.

The task given to our committee on g July of last year by this Parliament was to formulate the major objective of European Union - of which the Community, Political Cooperation and the EMS are only partial forms - and redefine institutional competences and the necessary institutional reforms.

For five months we have discussed the general characteristics of such reforms and the reasons why they are necessary. We have re-written the text of the resolution three times on the basis of long general discussions, and a fourth time on the basis of some 90 amendments presented by Members from each part of the political spectrum of this Assembly - amendments which have nearly all become part of the definitive text. This text, then, which nevertheless has its own unity, is the result of a. collective effort on the part of the entire committee, which finally approved it with 31 votes in favour and 2 abstentions out of a total of 37 members. The committee, therefore, presents this text to you with a considerable amount of political authority.

After its presentation some twenty new amendments were tabled for the debate in the Chamber. Some of these suggest clarifications of concept or style which harmonize with the decisions of the Committee on Institutional Affairs. I therefore feel authorized to suggest their adoption to you.

Others have already been incorporated into the committee's text, but they are amalgamated with other clarifications requested by other colleagues. I will ask their sponsors to withdraw them so as not to jeopardize the compromises already attained. If they are not withdraw, I will ask you to reject them.

Finally, others are in direct opposition to the spirit and the letter of the committee's text, and I therefore call upon you to reject them. In any case, I have the impression that none of these amendments has sufficient scope to make its adoption or rejection a condition for your final vote on the resolution.

To facilitate matters for each group and for each one of you, I have had a note prepared - unfortunately only in French - which contains my suggestions for each amendment and the reasons behind them.

The debate which will now take place and the vote which will conclude it will show that the work undertaken by this Parliament is not, and has no intention of being, the semi-secret work of a committee ignorant of the nature and size of the consensus supporting it; rather it is, and aims to be, an effort carried out with the active participation of Parliament as a whole.

On the basis of these guidelines, once they have been adopted here, our committee has already drawn up a plan for further work. Six rapporteurs, assisted by a coordinating rapporteur, will present you early next year with a detailed plan for an overall resolution outlining the practical solutions to be applied to the various questions raised in the general guidelines. Only after having received your definite and reasoned approval will we elaborate the formal plan of reform. We will then submit that to your judgment and final vote, so that it can be sent to the Member States for ratification before the next European elections.

At a time when the Community and the Member States are wondering about their own and the Community's future, at a time when the feeling of bewilderment is widespread, when there is a strong temptation to seek inspiration in outdated forms only because there is no courage to speak of new ones, at such a time the present debate and the vote which will conclude it cannot fail to have great political significance. If, as we hope, the outcome is positive, this will mean not only that the European Parliament will have had the courage to lead the way, but also that all those who vote for the guidelines will have committed themselves to explaining these guidelines to their parties, to their electors, to their national parliaments and governments. It will mean more than the adoption of just one more parliamentary resolution to join the innumerable others; it will signal the beginning of a democratic political battle for the Europe of the 80's, for a Europe made by Europeans for Europeans.

(6 july 1982)

Mr President, to all those who expressed appreciation of my work I would like to say that these compliments are due to the entire committee, for the work whose results I presented stems from many month's collective labour in which all the members of the committee participated.

Someone said here that we have been speaking without any contact with reality, that the issues are fantastic and therefore of little importance. I would like to say to those who expressed this opinion that because we have known each other for some time, because we are all involved with the problems of our citizens and the political forces of our countries, and because we closely follow the European problems we were elected to deal with, anything can be said except that this Assembly is made up of impractical theorists who run after fantasies. I will therefore urge these colleagues to ask themselves if perhaps we are the ones who fail to recognize the nature of the problems we are experiencing.

I was sure that in our discussion here we would arrive at the results we obtained even before the vote, which have emerged from the general tone of the opinions expressed. But I would like to recall the attention of all my colleagues to the fact that a year ago these results were far from certain; that we have been able to come thus far only because we held an exhaustive political debate where none of us said: I am speaking in the name of my country, but rather, I will be the spokesman of certain experiences among others which took place in my country. By speaking in this way we were able, gradually and painfully - for it was a long and laborious process - to find the means to formulate some broad common guidelines which constitute the beginning - as was said by many, and most lately by Mr Blumenfeld - of a task that must be performed, and at the same time serve to indicate the direction in which we must proceed. This is the way a European Parliament functions.

At the same time another initiative was being introduced by persons who perhaps have an even better right than we do to speak of the construction of Europe. This was the Genscher-Colombo plan; various discussions were held at Coreper, and the Danish presidency, which holds office for these six months, expressed its opinion on the conclusions reached in the Genscher-Colombo act and on how the act itself would develop:

'The Danish Presidency takes tbe view that the restructuring of the institutions and powers of the Community would not contribute towards the promotion of cooperation orbasten the progress towards European integration.

The Presidency will therefore not grant priority to tbe proposals made in this area. It will emphasize instead the concentration of effort on central aspects of cooperation'.

This is what is comes to when the problems relating to the construction of Europe are left in the hands of the agents of the national diplomatic services instead of being entrusted to the representatives of the European citizens.

Therefore, I believe that the parallel development of these two experiments should reassure us and show us that we are going in the right direction.

I would like to make some brief and general observations concerning the amendments. I have already said, and I repeat, that a careful study of the amendments leads me to conclude that, whether adopted or rejected, they do not substantially modify the basic character of the text. In most cases I will ask the sponsors of the amendments to withdraw them, since they are often only repetitions of things already discussed in committee, or other variations on the same themes. To give an example particularly addressed to those who presented it, I will cite Amendment 13 of the French Socialists, which, according to its sponsors, is supposed to contain an indication of something substantially different than what we say in the resolution. I will dwell on it for a moment, omitting the rest because they deal with similar matters.

In Amendment 13, paragraph 1, it is urged that the text of the resolution, after the second hyphen, be rewritten in the following manner:

'... and declares that the realization of the union is indispensables, but that it should not be restricted to an institutional operation'.

Here follow various reproaches for our having restricted it 'to an institutional operation'.

'... convinced that reform of the institutions, indispensable though it is for improving the functioning of the Community, cannot replace joint action to meet the political, social, and economic challenges of today and tomorrow...'

And what does the resolution say?

The amendment says: 'to favour its development'.

'... consequently, institutional progress should be linked to the definition of new common policies favouring advances in key areas - the fight against unemployment - social and industrial policies - the figbt against imbalances - fiscal and regional policies - the fight for peace and development cooperation and the North-Soutb policy...'

It seems to me that my French colleagues have presented a different and less happy formulation of what is much more clearly expressed in the resolution. I would like to say to them that their idea, which they rightly value, is expressed with clarity and vigour in the text of the resolution.

There is stress laid on enabling Europe to respond to the new challenges of the crisis...

'... the growing Political, economic, and social solidarity of these peoples in the respect of individual and collective rights'... etc... and that 'the objective of European union was fixed in the treaty. Advances made towards the objective of the union, although considerable, have been spasmodic and inadequate to meet the new economic andpolitical challenges...' etc.

It is asserted that evolution is favoured in the direction of the affirmation of identity, of a truly democratic 'maitrise' of economic and social life, while this concept, which calls for a democratic 'maitrise' of development in order to respond to the challenges of the crisis, is present in the resolution from the first line to the last.

'... the envisaged enlargement of the Community to include other Member States makes the need for reform even more urgent... 'while the resolution of the Italian Socialists says,'... the forthcoming enlargement of the Community to include other Member States makes the needfor reform even more urgent...'

The only difference is this: 'forthcoming' is much more precise than 'envisaged', for with 'forthcoming' we intend to say that this will soon take place. If we were in committee, I would suggest that the entire text be rewritten; but at this point, ladies and gentlemen, when we are all aware that everything is the result of discussions, agreements and formulations to allow for all the various requirements, do we really want to take a vote to decide whether to say ,envisaged' or 'forthcoming'?

I would therefore like to invite the sponsors of the amendment to withdraw it.

We are aware of your anxieties and your reservations. I will add that these anxieties are shared by many of us, for many of us - myself in particular insisted on not speaking only of institutions, but rather of institutions intended for solving certain problems. This idea is vigorously defended here, and among its most lucid and authoritative supporters was our former president, Mrs Veil.

I urge therefore that we refrain from voting on this amendment and on the others as well. One of these proposes that we drop the idea that Parliament should have something to say in Commission's appointment of the judges; another calls for us to omit the tentative schedule for our work and leave our calendar more open. Well, we do not vote on amendments that say the same thing, even if they are formulated in different ways!

In order to demonstrate that we intend to take our work seriously, it is necessary to give to the resolution a character of greater convergence, for we need a broad consensus in order to call this problem to the attention of public opinion, to whose judgment we must shortly submit. For this reason I appeal to everyone, and particularly to the French members from the Socialist Group, not to deny their support to this motion for a resolution only because here and there a sentence is not completely to their liking. This would be unfair.

Mr President, I will conclude very rapidly, in the conviction that Parliament has gathered here to discuss, and not just to count the minutes. In any case, what I have left to say will take only a minute: it has been said that here the spectres of the 50's are reappearing. In the 50's, as Mr Pflimlin reminded us, important ideas were formulated and built on. These ideas, however, were limited and inadequate. The ideas we are formulating today ate not these of the 50's, they are a response to the problems we face today, and not in the year 2000. I ask you to vote in favour of the resolution.