"Glasnost" or the transparency of the institutions of the Federation of Soviet Republics was one of Mikhaïl Gorbatchev's priorities, when the reform of the Soviet system was launched in order to discard communist totalitarianism and to mobilise the people towards a democratic and peaceful revolution. To be sure, Community Europe is not obliged to undergo the violations of individual and collective freedoms suffered by Soviet society for seventy years. Yet community Europe has to put up with an intolerable situation of subjugation which comes from national burocracies. These bureaucracies stifle any meaningful participation by the people in the management of the community "res publica" and frustrate the decision-making process and the implementation of the European Administration (the Commission). Legislative power is given to an Assembly or Council, filled by national ministers or officials who are accountable in only a limited way, if at all, to the public for their actions. Unique in the Western Demo

cratic world the Council deliberates and promulgates Community laws in meetings which, being in camera, lack all transparency. The Community constitution - the Treaties of Paris and Rome - has been amended eight times already under the same non-transparent method which is the hallmark of Community legislation. This has awaken no protests from the body politic and the European people, except from Altiero Spinelli and the Federalists. The latest and the most extensive amendment, which has taken shape in the Maastricht Treaty on European Union has provoked such negative reaction that the Governments of the Twelve have been forced to reflect, like Mikhaïl Gorbatchev, on how to make Community Europe more transparent. Again aroused from its long slumbers which made it quite impotent during the inter-governmental conferences, the European Parliament has, by way of a Resolution adopted in the extraordinary session convened on the initiative of the Federal Intergroup on 14 October, lit a clear path towards making E

urope more transparent. This is to make the sessions of the legislative Assembly (the Council) public, to create a truly bi-cameral Parliament (with the power of co-decision with the European Parliament) to strengthen the control of national parliaments over their governments and of the European Parliament over the Commission. Some of these requirements must be realised immediately, others by means of a bringing forward of the intergovernmental conference envisaged by the Maastricht Treaty for 1996: the goal of a transparent and democratic Europe can only ever be achieved, in the mind of the European Parliament, by means of a Federal constitution understandable by all citizens. The twelve national governments, hastily met on 16 October, have adopted a useless and pompous "Birmingham Declaration", drafted days before by the functionaries of the Foreign Office. Shut away in their Winter Palace like the pathetic Moscow plotters of 15 August 1991 the twelve national governments display a will to tighten their

grip on Community Europe by emasculating the European Commission and reducing Community competence by an arbitrary application of the principle of subsidiarity. The European press has played its part in spreading all over the Continent the fog thrown up in Birmingham by the twelve governments. How much longer must we suffer this intolerable farce?