ABSTRACT: With the Luxemburg summit underway among the prime ministers of the twelve EC countries to discuss the proposed treaty for union approved by the European Parliament, Marco Pannella affirms that the dividing line is clear: those who propose "realistically" to limit things to financial and economic measures and put off political union until tomorrow; and those who instead believe that without a European political authority, democratically and juridically guaranteed, Europe will remain at the mercy of the great North-South and East-West confrontations.

(REPORTER, December 4, 1985)

"Extend its powers?", exclaimed in the Council Mrs. Thatcher apropos of the European Parliament. "Rather we should put an end to its direct election!" The iron maiden was seeing things clearly: to safeguard the putrefaction of Europe and guard against surprise moves by the individual nations, there should be a return to work and an end to discussions of politics and high strategy. Diplomacy would have to go back to being the servant- master of the undisturbed politicians. As has now happened, the very grave political error of entrusting the work of the Inter-governmental Conference to functionaries - an error for which Italy unfortunately is also partly responsible - has made a farce of it and destroyed in six months everything that was achieved by the European Parliament, the Dodge Commission, and the Italian presidency, to arrive at the obtuse situation of these last two days.

As I write these lines we still do not know the outcome of the Luxemburg summit. We do not know if Italy will have held to its line or will have given in. However, already this morning in Brussels the Institutional Commission of the European Parliament, with Altiero Spinelli presiding, will meet again, and on this occasion we will prepare the reply that the European Commission will have to give in its next session, December 11, at Strasbourg. And as far as I am concerned, if Italy gave way, there would be a crisis in Rome despite Andreotti's equivocal position. If we approved of the firm stand on Sigonella, even in a murky and suspect context, it was not in order to tolerate or approve wishy-washyness in Europe. All the more since the Parliament expressed itself with absolute unanimity in the Foreign Affairs Commission a few days ago just in order to ward off this eventuality.

The news, on the other hand and fortunately, is different for now: a flood of reservations and opposition has been put by the Italian delegation, by Craxi, against the indecorous sequel of partial adjustments of sectors, sometimes even worse, on the monetary one, on arrangements, on the Parliament's powers, on technology, etc.

To get to the point, however, my conviction is that: "ce n'e qu'un début", beginning from the last beach. The Treaty proposed by the European Parliament, supported in substance by the Dodge Committee, which is a political expression of the individual governments and which has been liquidated by this indecorous Inter-governmental Conference called by request of the Parliament - this Treaty was and is certainly good. It can be improved and we will improve it - but for arriving in time at the European Union, the United States of Europe.

The dividing line is clear by now: there are those who continue to propose the "realism" of putrefaction for today and the redemption by means of economic and financial measures by 1996 or 2000 (I am not joking: I have written down proposals and projects), and those on the other hand who believe that without a European political authority, democratically and juridically guaranteed, we will become before 2000 a "Mediterranean" area, more or less Lebanese, all the way from Dublin to Copenhagen, from Lisbon to Athens, going by way of London, Paris, Bonn and Rome. The concreteness of "Eureka" [project for new technologies, ed.] (which is mostly extra-communitarian) is a swindle; our common agricultural policy today already makes us vassals of the food arm of the multinationals; our North-South policy is non-existent so that we are at the mercy of the East-West one in which we have no role except total submission.

Yesterday morning at Nantes a Radical militant, Jean-Paul Sultaut, was condemned to six months in prison. He is a conscientious objector who, "besides everything else", claims to be "subject to European law". For the same reasons Olivier Dupuis is in prison in Brussels, sentenced to 24 months. In Luxembourg yesterday there were the flags of the federation of the PCI of Ferrara and the Christian Democrats of Trapani.

If anyone has any doubts that in Italy there are thoughts of a great political and institutional reform based on an Anglo-Saxon type of single-candidate election, he is right in having them: but add onto the bill that from now on the dividing line will be European federalist with over there the "Europeans" of the tragi-comic "small steps" - small steps towards national and international catastrophe.

I heard talk of "catastrophe" the other day in the meeting of the European Parliament's Presidency from Sir Fred Caterwood who, although representing the conservative group, was in unison with the ideas of Spinelli and some of the exigencies that I had anticipated for that occasion. And except for several French groups, the attention given by "Reporter" and "L'Unità" and the scarcely veiled hostility of "La Repubblica" are other symptoms that appear excellent to us on the road to "new" political clarity; to policies which, beyond that of a possible "left", that above all needs new, European information....

Mitterand and Kohl are shadows of themselves, as are their opponents: they are proposing nothing and try to conceal it. These are the dramatic - and partly painful - testimonies of the nihilism with which they seek to conserve power in the face of the pressing political urgencies that do not allow for choices of mere national, corporative, conservation of security and defense based on their "military" power.

Craxi and Andreotti, if they hold to their line, may soon find that the "isolation" with which they are being reproved today will become the positions of others. Finally, European "interests" and "peoples" today find themselves having to march together in the direction of what would seem to be their own and, broadly, "Italian" unity.