ABSTRACT: Present-day Europe, the Europe characterized by the new wealth brought about thanks to the destruction of millions of tons of agricultural surplus, is not something we can look to with hope. Only the "Europe of the radicals", the Europe that is united to assert democracy and to defeat starvation in the countries of the Third and Fourth World, can be a Europe of the people. Five practical proposals for initiatives in this sense.

(Radical News N. 1 of 9 January 1988)

"Euro-pessimists" is how they called us when we said that a strategy based on small steps and compromises would never lead to the United States of Europe, i.e. the European Union.

We asked to enforce the draft Union Treaty approved by the European Parliament under the impulse of Altiero Spinelli; they, the "Euro-optimists", were content with the Single Act of Luxembourg.

We said that without important steps in the direction of a reform of the community institutions, i.e., toward the creation of a single democratic government of Europe controlled by a single democratic Parliament, respectively endowed with full executive and legislative powers on matters pertaining to the community, the objective of the Luxembourg Act, i.e., the complete integration and liberalization of the inner market scheduled by 1992, would either not be achieved or - even worse - would have lead to the democratic destabilization of Europe.

The interests of the European industrial and financial multinationals are clear: on the one hand they advocate the liberalization of the European market and of the exchanges, on the other they prefer to have a weak and controllable Commission and Council as counterparts instead of strong democratic institutions capable of an effective control and intervention on the economy, possibly aiming to establish strict anti-trust regulations.

The failure of the Copenhagen summit, where the Twelve proved incapable even of agreeing on the 1988 budget and on the community prices of agricultural products, has deprived even the most inveterate Euro-optimists of all hope.

Yet it is not enough to be right: we also need to devise the remedies. To obtain this, it is necessary to point out friends and enemies, set ourselves ambitious and reasonable goals, seek possible allies.

The enemies are well known, despite the fact that they are often disguised as friends beneath a facade Europeanism. First of all, the governments of the Twelve, i.e. the national and community bureaucracies which have everything to lose and nothing to gain out of the process of political integration: less lobbyist power, less possibilities of speculating on the parasitical national structures, more control on the part of the European Parliament. But even the executive Commission of Jacques Delors, apparently an ally of the European Parliament, has proven to want to use parliamentary support at all times for low-profile compromises for the Council. The very words "institutional reforms" have disappeared from Delors' political lexicon, despite repeated and solemn promises. The European Parliament, for its part, by approving the draft Union Treaty during the last legislature, has done all it could do, considering the limited, quasi non-existant powers granted to this institution which is nonetheless elected by

universal suffrage. The effect of resignation of the European deputies, controlled by bureaucratic and sclerotic political groups, has reached such high levels during this legislature so as to prevent any margin of initiative.

The same applies to the national parties, which remember the existence of the Europeanist and federalist hopes once every five years, during the elections for the European Parliament.

We have already commented on the industrials, as well as their newspapers and journalists who even have the nerve to ask to be paid to attend the sessions of the European Parliament in Strasbourg two or three days a month.

All we are left with is the public opinion, the people who, when polled by the Eurobarometer, express themselves in favour not only of the general idea of the United States of Europe, but also for the hypothesis of transferring national powers to the community institutions.

But there can be no democratic rebellion at a moment in which the prevailing culture associates the Europeanist and federalist idea at the most to some economic advantage, less trouble, or - even worse - the illusion of a Europe ranking third as industrial and military power after U.S.S.R. and U.S.

Clearly, the economic advantages are not negligible. Obviously it is unthinkable to go on paying the absurd price, in economic and political terms, of twelve budgets for research and defence as well as twelve monetary policies.

Obviously only a united and integrated Europe could compete internationally, could safeguard its interests, especially at a moment in which the U.S. is proving incapable of assuming an economic and political leadership of the West.

However, the Europeanist and federalist idea expressed by the Manifesto of Ventotene has been able to grow and assert itself to some extent with the first creation of the community institutions only because it was the expression and the bearer of consistent political ideals, and not just of merchant interests. The question was that of conceiving the new political structure of Europe after centuries of fratricide wars, after twenty years of Nazi and fascist barbarities, at a moment in which the failure of the Leninist revolution started to dawn.

The Europe of merchants, of the new wealth brought about thanks to the senseless destruction of millions of tons of agricultural surplus, will never become something which the people can entrust the slightest part of their hopes to.

We therefore see that only the Europe of the radicals, the Europe which needs to be created in order to defeat totalitarianism and assert democracy, to defeat starvation and assert individual rights versus State oppression, can be the Europe of the people - the objective and the ideal for which it is worth paying personal price.

A first proposal in this sense is currently being examined by the party's bodies:

1) Charging the European Parliament, to be elected by universal suffrage on June 1989, with the task of updating the proposal of new Treaties for the European Union already approved by the European Parliament by 1989. Such Treaties will need to be submitted directly to the ratification of the Parliaments of the member States.

2) Election of the President of the Commission on the part of the European Parliament elected in 1989 and of the twelve parliaments of the member States according to appropriate procedures.

The President of the Commission, who will need to obtain the confidence on his program from the European parliament, will remain in charge for four non-extendible years.

3) Election of the President of the European Council, with tasks of permanent co-president of the Council of Ministers of the EEC, on the part of the European parliament elected in 1989 and of the parliaments of the twelve member States, according to the appropriate procedures. The co-president will remain in charge for four non-extendible years.

4) Examining the possibility of associating to the two elections the members of the Assembly of the Council of Europe that are not part of the EEC that request it.

5) Allotting 2% of the national defence budgets of the Twelve member States for the promotion and safeguard of civil and human rights in Eastern Europe, in conformity with the 3rd set of agreements of Helsinki, as of 1990.

The most important characteristic of this proposal is that of directing involving the national parliaments in the process of the construction of the United States of Europe, at a moment in which it seems obvious that neither the governments of the member States nor the European parliament itself have the strength to enact the draft Union Treaty which Altiero Spinelli (1) managed to impose during the last legislature at the European parliament.

The proposal to summon the "general States of Europe" for the election of the President of Europe and of the President of the E.C. executive fulfils the increasingly felt need for Europe to speak with a single voice and for two prestigious authorities, drawing legitimated directly by the European Parliament and the national parliaments, to be able to prevail over the interests of the national and community bureaucracies, which paralyse every decision-making capacity of the Commission and of the Council.

Along with these main objectives, there is the proposal, advanced with the referendum initiative of the European federalist parliamentary group, to request the endowment of constituent powers to the European Parliament for the preparation of the new Union treaties.

The last proposal, of allotting 2% of the defence budgets to the war against totalitarianism, is a result of the belief which Marco Pannella (2) repeatedly expressed that the proposal and the defence of a new political, social system for Europe can occur only in the awareness that this must also represent a weapon of subversion and possible new order also in the enemy field.

It is a political project and a challenge which must be capable of upsetting structures and dislocations in the radical parties and in the radicals in order to be successful. It must involve the so-called leadership and all militants. Above all, it is a political project which can hope to be successful only if it will be capable of promoting and fostering an idea which for the moment is simply a radical metaphor: the transnational radical party.

Translator's notes

(1) SPINELLI ALTIERO. ( Rome 1907 - 1982). Italian politician. During fascism, from 1929 to 1942, he was imprisoned as leader of the Italian Communist Youth. In 1942 co-author, with Ernesto Rossi, of the "Manifesto of Ventotene", which states that only a federal Europe can remove the return of fratricide wars in the European continent and give it back an international role. At the end of the war he founded, with Rossi, Eugenio Colorni and others, the European federalist Movement. After the crisis of the European Defence Community (1956), he became member of the European Commission, and followed the evolution of the Community structures. In 1979 he was elected member of the European Parliament on the ticket of the Italian Communist Party (PCI), becoming the directive mind in the realization of the draft treaty adopted by that parliament in 1984 and known as the "Spinelli Project".

(2) PANNELLA MARCO. Pannella Giacinto, known as Marco. (Teramo 1930). Currently President of the Radical Party's Federal Council, which he is one of the founders of. At twenty national university representative of the Liberal Party, at twenty-two President of the UGI, the union of lay university students, at twenty-three President of the UNURI, national union of Italian university students. At twenty-four he advocates, in the context of the students' movement and of the Liberal party, the foundation of the new radical party, which arises in 1954 following the confluence of prestigious intellectuals and minor democratic political groups. He is active in the party, except for a period (1960-1963) in which he is correspondent for "Il Giorno" in Paris, where he established contacts with the Algerian resistance. Back in Italy, he commits himself to the reconstruction of the radical Party, dissolved by its leadership following the advent of the centre-left. Under his indisputable leadership, the party succeeds in

promoting (and winning) relevant civil rights battles, working for the introduction of divorce, conscientious objection, important reforms of family law, etc, in Italy. He struggles for the abrogation of the Concordat between Church and State. Arrested in Sofia in 1968 as he is demonstrating in defence of Czechoslovakia, which has been invaded by Stalin. He opens the party to the newly-born homosexual organizations (FUORI), promotes the formation of the first environmentalist groups. The new radical party organizes difficult campaigns, proposing several referendums (about twenty throughout the years) for the moralization of the country and of politics, against public funds to the parties, against nuclear plants, etc., but in particular for a deep renewal of the administration of justice. Because of these battles, all carried out with strictly nonviolent methods according to the Gandhian model - but Pannella's Gandhi is neither a mystic nor an ideologue; rather, an intransigent and yet flexible politician - h

e has been through trials which he has for the most part won. As of 1976, year in which he first runs for Parliament, he is always elected at the Chamber of Deputies, twice at the Senate, twice at the European Parliament. Several times candidates and local councillor in Rome, Naples, Trieste, Catania, where he carried out exemplary and demonstrative campaigns and initiatives. Whenever necessary, he has resorted to the weapon of the hunger strike, not only in Italy but also in Europe, in particular during the major campaign against world hunger, for which he mobilized one hundred Nobel laureates and preeminent personalities in the fields of science and culture in order to obtain a radical change in the management of the funds allotted to developing countries. On 30 September 1981 he obtains at the European parliament the passage of a resolution in this sense, and after it several other similar laws in the Italian and Belgian Parliament. In January 1987 he runs for President of the European Parliament, obtaini

ng 61 votes. Currently, as the radical party has pledged to no longer compete with its own lists in national elections, he is striving for the creation of a "transnational" cross-party, in view of a federal development of the United States of Europe and with the objective of promoting civil rights throughout the world.