The decision to join the Socialist Group in the European Parliament, which will be take effect from January 1993 onwards, has not been seen by the MEPs of the PDS as a necessary consequence of the rules of the Socialist International and the Union of the European Socialist Parties, of which the PDS, in Berlin first and in The Hague later, has become a full member. On the contrary, it was a deliberate choice, which was also encouraged by a determined political action within the EP. Here, the political convergences with the Socialist Group on the main themes of community integration were systematically confirmed. The meaning of this membership increases considerably today. It is a matter of giving a new political and organizational dimension to the forces of the democratic and reforming left in the EP, so that the challenge of new Europe be fully understood by the people. We cannot watch powerlessly as European history goes astern. Europe would risk to be put, because of this U-turn, in the dustbin of utopias

which leave the European house in the hands of market and racialist selfishness. Political and economic Europe is going through a period of difficult recession. Governments, political classes, traditional parties, defenders of the status quo, are incapable of looking beyond the short term: they live in a state of general resignation in the face of the weaknesses of Western democracy, which have yet again been exposed. What is necessary is an innovative project from the European Left, acting within the European Parliament and expressing itself in the European Socialists Party Programme, founded in The Hague on 9 November 1992. This project must be for a Europe of solidarity between generations; a democratic, transparent and social Europe; a Europe capable of being the leading actor in a new global order; an open and perceptive Europe. We want a project for a Federal Europe which not only respects but also is capable of making the most of diversities in order to allow a language going beyond the uncertainties

and ambiguities of the Maastricht Treaty. This project, however, must take into account the difficult law of the political fight, which drew the European Left into an embarrassed silence during the tough attacks by the right to its own fundamental acquisitions, after the fall of Communism in Eastern Europe. Our effort in Strasbourg, in the winter of 92-93, can contribute to rescuing the endangered "acquis communautaire" and also - more ambitiously - to defend the reasons for which we were born and for which the job of the PDS - in Italy as in Europe -can still be meaningful.

Luigi Colajanni

GUE Group President