La Stampa, Turin, 21 August 1990

It is not against (or pro) Baghdad, but against or pro Rome, the government and De Michelis, that the political world and the medias have taken position in these weeks. Pro-intervention or pacifists, as usual, maybe worse than usual; what is more, fighting among each other. Parlato and Natta against Occhetto, Sergio Romano and Giorgio La Malfa against Gianni De Michelis. As with Lebanon, the Red Sea...

The first to violate the community dispositions, the very first

not to respect the European jurisdiction, excelling - and it really takes an effort! - in national-populism; this is the "federalist European" Italy, of the referendum for the United States of Europe, of the Spinelli project of the European Parliament, of the ultra-decennial quasi-unanimities of the Italian Parliament. But what risks remaining, in any case, as a consequence of the new middle-East crisis, however tragical it may appear and be today, is the conclusive and irreparable crisis of the formation of the European Union, and this precisely at a moment in which the events of the East, which call for a "political and legal" answer more than an economic one, could have brought about the constitution of the first political and democratic, economic and cultural, force and "power" of the world.

The Italian presidency of the E.C. had already started unfavorably, almost a farce, according to the majority of people, as regards the expectations that had accompanied it. A pseudo-cosmopolitism of a typically provincial order found its first negative correspondence in Europe. A reprise of the federalist initiative of the last Italian presidency, excellently conducted by Craxi and Andreotti, which had been concluded with the Single Act, which Italy signed "the last and with explicit reservation", was both expected and highly necessary, also because of the repeated and urging deliberations of the European Parliament and (until he was forced to come to compromises) of President Delors. Inter-governmental conferences for monetary and economic unity, for the scheduled constitution of a minimum of guarantied, classic, democratic federal authority, major European parliamentary sessions in Rome, objectively competing acceleration with the German unity of the Community union: these were the themes, the extraordin

ary richness of which the Italian presidency could have profited of. August should have been used for this purpose.

The explosion of the Iraqi bomb should have and could have followed the ripening of a full assumption of European responsibility. The Italian presidency should have immediately promoted, even publicly, a meeting of the Twelve, with the maximum of solemnity, of drama, of sensibility. The Commission should not have failed to adhere, as far as its president Delors is

concerned, to the initiative. The context of the so-called "political cooperation" was enough for this; even the Genscher-Colombo act, not only the Single Act of Luxembourg. Of course, the mortgage of unanimity would have weighed on an executive decision. But the world - and Saddam - would have found, in the European Union, a reference point of strength, of sensibility, of new aggregation and expression also for the USSR (whose leveling on the policies of Washington is useful for no one) and for many countries of the Third World. Until this point I have used the past and the conditional tense, because it is probable that the logic of things, rather than the human logic, will continue to reign and to lead to even worse situations. Apart from the ideal and political misery of such a great part of the leading class, too many unavowed realities concur, in fact, in forming the most extraordinary of conformist, paralysing unanimities, which, for two weeks now, manifest themselves in the European continent. By refu

sing the community and European pattern, from the institutional and political point of view, Italy and France first of all will not be free in their actions, blackmailed by the gigantic complex of common interests, of complicity, which are most certainly operating with Saddam and his regime. Immense European and especially French multinational superpowers, in addition to the intelligence services of these States, public, semi-public and private corporations are exposed to the blackmailing activity of the extremely capable and deplorable dictator who, as any other dictator, like Siad Barre and- at the beginning - Khomeini himself, have their strength in that which we have given them, and at times even imposed.

Separated, the European states cannot but produce wishful thinking, corruption, weakness; and all the more because France more than Italy, are states based on an excessive power of the parties, and are non-democratic, biased states.

Immediately before the meeting of the Italian Parliament and of the European Parliament (but why did the Italian presidency not ask for an extraordinary session?), I will once again use the present tense, instead of the past tense. The transnationality of the Radical Party, the embryo which is developing thanks to its influence, allows me to do so, and requests me to do so. Europe can move, can be created. Let's make it therefore, let's operate. Let's send a "gunboat" now, from Rome to Brussels.