The Conference of the Parliaments of the European Communities, the summit of the members of the 21 parliaments of the twelve countries of the EEC and of the European Parliament was held in Rome from 26th to 30th November. French President Mitterrand launched the idea of a meeting of all the elected candidates of the Community, while the Radicals were the promoters of a motion, both at the Italian and at the European Parliament, urging all the members of such parliaments (over 6000) to gather into European General States on the occasion of the bicentennial of the French Revolution to put an end to the absolutism of the Council of EEC ministers, and to the democratic deficit which currently characterizes the life of the Community.

The meeting held in Rome represented a compromise reached between the advocates of a greater unity among the European elected candidates, also in support of the European Parliament - considered a second-rate Parliament as it is almost void of powers - and the suggestions of some governments, who paradoxically viewed this meeting as the occasion to set the requests of the national parliaments and of the European Parliament against one another, with the purpose of boycotting the attempts to achieve a federalist type of European integration and of upholding pure inter-governmental cooperation in its place, thus essentially maintaining the status quo.

But let us proceed with an in-depth analysis of this strategy, fundamentally advocated by Mitterrand, the worthy heir of General De Gaulle and of his "Europe des Patries".

Once the project of summoning the 6969 members of the Parliaments of the Community in Paris (as Marco Pannella has devised and expressed in parliamentary bills) had failed, it had been agreed to summon the meeting in Rome, on the eve of the European Summit which will open the two intergovernmental conferences for the reform of the EEC treaties - one for the economic and monetary Union, the other for political Union. In this sense the European Parliament adopted a bill advocating an equalitarian meeting among the representatives of the European Parliament and of the national parliaments.

However, during the preliminary negotiation among the Presidents of the European Parliamentary Assemblies for the agenda of the Summit, this ratio was transformed into two national delegates for each European MP, owing to pressures on the part of the national parliaments. The result was a Conference made of 85 members of the European Parliament versus 170 national MPs. Not only: the idea emerged during the preliminary proceedings - advocated by the head of the French diplomacy, Roland Dumas - of transforming this first meeting into a permanent Assembly, a sort of second parliament. The purpose of this suggestion is evident: a second parliament already exists in the ideal model of the current communities, and, a fortiori, also in the federalist idea: it is the Council of Ministers, a true parliament of the States that should share the legislative power with the European Parliament, according to the model adopted in West Germany. The Council of Ministers instead, in addition to having executive powers in certa

in fields, which should be the prerogative of the Commission presided by Jacques Delors, can also legislate on community matters, taking the European Parliament's opinion in little or no account. This was an excellent occasion, therefore, to create another parliamentary body, with the excuse of solving the Community's democratic deficit, beefing up the governments' exclusive power, so as to avoid using this Summit to check the intention of creating a federal-based Europe and of re-balancing the division of powers within the institutions.

A massive offensive had been launched by the mass media. The President of the European Parliament, left out of the banquet of the Heads of Government of the Twelve in the first summit organized by the Italian Presidency in October, was portrayed as the herald of a group of failed or second-rate politicians, who claimed more power while incapable of carrying our their job zealously, depicting them, in short, as the persons responsible for the delays in the achievement of the European Single Market.

Italian Foreign Minister De Michelis, he too a member of this group of prevalently Socialist officials of the Community convinced that parliaments, and especially the European Parliament, are more a hindrance and an obstacle for the European construction, really overstepped the mark. On the eve of the Summit, the statements he delivered were so rash that they turned into a boomerang for himself and for his friends, and paradoxically did the European Parliament a big favour.

What did De Michelis actually say? He went do far as to maintain that the European Parliament is a major obstacle for the European construction, affected as it is, by insubstantiality and overenthusiasm. The statements were enough for Pannella to ask De Michelis to resign and to trigger a collection of signatures to publicly condemn these statements, inviting the minister to retract them.

The Secretary of the Communist party, Achille Occhetto, and with him many communist MPs and dozens of other members of the European Parliament joined this initiative, which thus kept the press busy for the first two days of the Conference's proceedings, thanks also to an immediate, indignant reply from the President of the European Parliament, Enrique Baron. This incident clearly unveiled what was going on behind the diplomatic manoeuvres of the meeting of Rome. While many national members of Parliament, respectful of the prerogatives of the members of elective assemblies, expressed solidarity to their colleagues of the European Parliament, and agreed on the need for a joint action to recover their powers at the respective decisional levels, dropping the idea of creating a carbon copy of the already existing supra-national parliament, and concentrating on exerting a better control on national governments on the one hand and on the Council of EEC Ministers on the other hand.

This is the gist of the political battle fought in Rome, in the corridors of Parliament; meanwhile interventions followed one another in Montecitorio (the Italian parliament, editor's note) for the first time according to the strict rules of the Parliament of Strasburg.

The final bill, voted with the significant abstention of Fabius, Mitterand's heir, and of the other French socialists of the Assemblée Nationale, joined by the French Gaullists and by the British conservatives, reflects the positions already expressed by the European parliament for a federal-based European Union and for the development of a European Constitution envisaging the active participation of the European Parliament. Over 80% of the participants voted this text, which excludes the transformation of the Conference into a parliamentary body, and confirms the European Parliament's unique role in the process of European integration. This represents a considerable achievement for the European parliament; no small credit should be given to the federalist intergroup and to Marco Pannella especially, as well as to the other radicals present at the Summit, Adelaide Aglietta, co-President of the Green group and Peppino Calderisi, president of the federalist group at the Italian Chamber of Deputies, who also gr

eatly contributed to this result. The bill also represents a defeat for the advocates of a Europe composed of separate governments; deprived of Margaret Thatcher, the latter will have to expose themselves to a greater extent and explain the reasons for which European socialism does not want the Community to become a truly democratic, federalist, strong and open entity for the European countries who are just starting to open their doors to democracy.