by Antonio Stango

A seminar was held in Prague from the 15th to the 17th of June on the topic: "The transnational Radical Party and the new Europe", with the participation of the first secretary, the treasurer, the presidents of the party and of the Federal Council, members of the Italian and European Parliament and radical members operating in the countries of Central and Eastern Europe. Apart from members and supporters from Czechoslovakia, the seminar was also attended by members coming from Budapest, Moscow, Leningrad, Vilnius, Skopje, Zagreb, Ljubliana and Bucharest.

Rather than focusing on an analysis of the historical changes in course in Europe, and especially in the countries experiencing a period of transition between communist totalitarianism and the models of democratic politics, the seminar meant to repropose and discuss peculiar battles and methods of the Radical party as it has been up to now, and to begin to pinpoint some of the goals and the problems of the transnational party's future policy. This was attempted by means of a series of reports on specific topics - assigned to eleven members - and through a free discussion open to all interventions.

Non-violence, democratic and lay battles

The seminar was opened with a report by Roberto Cicciomessere (Italian MP) on the topic of political non-violence as a democratic and lay battle, in which he recalled the Radical campaigns of the sixties and eighties (with examples such as civil disobedience and the self-denunciation of several Radical exponents to obtain laws on abortion and conscientious objection in Italy) and in which he stated, among other things, the need to practice new forms of transnational non-violent initiatives also associating them to the federalist policy. Paolo Pietrosanti (member of the Federal Council) then talked about the campaign against the death penalty. Referring to the case of the United States of America, an example of a country with political democracy but in which in many federal states the death penalty is still in force, Pietrosanti lingered on the specific fact of the Radical initiative for the abolition of the death penalty. The Radicals, in fact, have always considered the problem of capital punishment as a pr

oblem of democracy, and not, or rather not only, as a problem of human rights.

In the debate following the first two reports, Antonio Stango (member of the Radical Party's Federal Council) asserted the possible validity of the non-violent action even within the single national states, and against the remaining Stalinist residues of Europe's configuration, and the need for the Radical Party to fight against the death penalty in its quality of human rights party.

United States of Europe

The evolution of the European Community from a federalist point of view was the topic of the reports delivered by federal councillors Gianfranco Dell'Alba (vice-secretary of the European Parliament's Green group) and Olivier Dupuis. Starting from the remark of an ever increasing rupture between federalists and Europeanists, in other words, between those who consider a federal Europe as the necessary means to face the new challenges of our epoch and those who consider Europe only as an instrument to better defend their national interests, Dell'Alba focused on the risks of seeing the federalist project of a political union of Europe completely relinquished, and, instead, of seeing the project of an intergovernmental cooperation strengthened. He then stressed the need for the federalists to firmly assert the need for the European Community to be open to all the countries that want to belong to a European federal State, and for it to be left by those who do not wish to proceed in this direction.

Taking as an example the situation of the countries of central and Eastern Europe, Olivier Dupuis underlined the risks that the strengthening of the intergovernmental direction, stronger and stronger within the countries of the Community, represents for these countries. According to Dupuis, the non-use of the historical opportunity represented by the liberation from totalitarianism for the countries of Central and Eastern Europe to create a federal Europe, may rapidly cause the whole continent to return to a situation of serious latent strife between the states, similar to the one of 1919, after "Versailles". In such a situation, the social difficulties inherent in the restructuring process in course could easily become pretexts for conflicts. A rapid adhesion of these countries to the European Community must be viewed not only as the means to avoid social and national explosions, but also - and above all - as the means to induce the European states of the West as of the East to firmly take the path toward a

federal Europe.

Conscientious objection

Moscow members of the Radical Party Nikolaj Khramov and Alexandr Pronozin talked about the campaign for the acknowledgement of the right to conscientious objection in the Soviet Union; in particular they illustrated the petition presented upon radical imitiative and signed by several members of the Moscow Soviet.

North-South: a battle for life

Emma Bonino (president of the Radical Party) then delivered a report on the role of the party as regards the struggle against mass starvation. The drastic reduction of the mortality rate, thanks to precise laws regulating extraordinary interventions in the Third World, has been a constant request of the Radicals since 1979, a request that was soon supported by a manifesto-appeal which was signed by 113 Nobel prizes. The many initiatives undertaken by the Radical party in the course of several years were not enough, however, to change the dominant culture and to arouse a true moral revolt against starvation: "a prevalently Italian party - Emma Bonino said - could not succeed in this attempt. The transnational party which we are conceiving in these months could perhaps succeed. But if this project will fail, the possibility of resuming the battle for life with new and increased forces will also fail".

Partitocracy or democracy

Lorenzo Strick-Lievers (member of the European Federalist and Environmentalist Group of the Italian Senate) made an analysis of the systems based on partitocracy, democracy and single party. At a moment of transition from dictatorship to democracy for the countries of Central and Eastern Europe, an evaluation of the Italian political system can be extremely useful. According to Strick-Lievers, the electoral system chosen by the antifascists must be carefully examined. This system, an almost pure proportional system, whose purpose was that of privileging the representation of all the interests of society, has on the contrary been the origin of a system in which no one has ever been responsible for things said and done. Italian politics have therefore become first a universal negotiation and then a division of the power. This process has lead to a system where there is plenty of freedom, but where there no longer is the certainty of the law and the respect of the rules of the game. In his conclusions, Strick-L

ievers stressed the validity of the Anglo-saxon electoral system.

South Africa, Tibet...

Giovanni Negri (Radical, member of the Italian Social Democrat Party) talked about a possible Radical approach toward the problems of South Africa, for which he remarked the positive changes of the present government which, according to Negri, represent the only true novelty as far as the construction of democracy in Africa is concerned. On the question of Tibet, which is still the victim of a harsh colonization, and for which the word genocide could be used on the part of China, Negri underlined the need for the transnational party to conceive new, non-violent actions.

National-democracy

The national-democratic evolutions of Central and Eastern Europe were the subject of an intervention by Adelaide Aglietta (Radical, Green member of the European Parliament). After having pointed to certain "national" temptations, common to several countries of Central and Eastern Europe, Aglietta focused on the cases of Rumania and Bulgaria, drawing from her own recent experiences as president of the "European Parliament-Rumania" and "European Parliament-Bulgaria" delegations.

Antiprohibitionism

Marco Taradash (antiprohibitionist member of the European Parliament) tackled the problem of antiprohibitionism on drugs in terms of a battle for democracy. He especially underlined the need to formulate, as soon as possible, an antiprohibitionist policy in the countries of Central and Eastern Europe, because there is the risk of experiencing, in these countries as well, an explosion of drug consumption and a consolidation of the international drug mafias, with all the consequences this would involve.

Rumania

Special attention was devoted during the seminar to the situation in Rumania. A few days after the brutal repression in Bucharest of the protests against the present government, the Radicals demonstrated in front of the Rumanian embassy for democracy, the respect of human and civil rights and non-violence, with banners and symbols of the party. A particularly significant intervention was that by Andra Bunea, a Bucharest student who was attacked and beaten up by one of the groups of miners who had been called to "restore the order" in the capital. Bunea gave us a direct testimony of the events of the 13th and 14th of June in Rumania.

Environment

Virginio Bettini (member of the European Parliament for the Green Party, member of the Radical party) was charged with delivering an exhaustive report on environmental problems. Bettini identified three major environmental sectors which need urgent interventions. The area of polluting emissions (sulphur dioxide and carbon dioxide); the agricultural sector, for which the production models have proven to be completely wrong; the energy sector, for which the profits are all catastrophic in the countries of Central and Eastern Europe, as proven by a comparison between East and West with a series of indicators.

The radical federalist and non-violent International

Dividing his exposé into a series of interventions, Marco Pannella (president of the Radical Party's Federal Council) extensively talked about the role of the party within the new Europe which is taking shape, amid contradictions and risks of very serious mistakes. The title of his speech was "the Radical federalist and non-violent International. Liberal-democracy and social-democracy". Starting from the remark on how rapid the Radicals' initiative has been in certain moments in which it was necessary to destabilize the totalitarian regimes in force in Central and Eastern Europe by means of non-violent actions, Pannella stressed the need to build not "democracy in just one country", but a federalist Europe and world, considering this as the only possible guarantee for the freedom and the rights of all citizens and of all minorities. Pannella told a Czechoslovakian newspaper: "I find the illusions that it is possible to return to the democracies of 1918-19 or '45 extremely dangerous. The democrats who wanted

democracy and independence for their country were overthrown first by the fascists and then by the communists".

Among the interventions in the general debate, those of Richard Stockar, John Bok, Irina Podlesova, Jan Honner, Mirek Sokup, Remo Csok, Miroslav Landa, Diana Rexhepi, Ionas Cekualis, Oldrich Piller (detained in the prison of Ostrov Nad Ohri); the latter had been granted a permit to take part in the seminar, also thanks to the cooperation of the director of the prison.

The debate highlighted on the one hand the difficulties that the activists of the different countries must face every day in terms of organization of the radical political action, on the other hand, some indications as regards the priorities and the goals that the party must pursue in the months to come. Many reservations have been expressed by members of the party as regards the habit of calling one another "comrade", a term which, in the countries that have gone through communist totalitarianism, assumes a completely negative meaning.

As a conclusion of the discussion, and also thanks to the moments of contact and dialogue arisen during the seminar, the coming campaign of radical initiatives in Europe was established in its general outline, with a collection of signatures for five petitions, identical for all countries, centred on non-violence, federalism and ecology. Signatures will be collected in the Soviet Union, in Czechoslovakia, in Hungary, in Rumania, in Yugoslavia and in other countries where there are radical activists and members, for the United States of Europe (two petitions), against the death penalty, for the right to conscientious objection and for an environment-oriented policy.

(*) We apologize with our readers for the conciseness of this summary, which cannot, of course, faithfully reflect the debate conducted in Prague. We will resume the argument, publishing several of the speeches of this seminar together with the text of the petitions in the following issues of the Radical Letter.