III.

THE PARTY OF THE EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT. THE PROPOSAL FOR THE STATES GENERAL OF EUROPE. THE CAMPAIGN PROMOTED BY THE RADICAL PARTY. THE DEAFNESS OF THE INTER-GOVERNMENTAL SUMMITS. THE PREVALENCE OF AN ANTI-COMMUNITARIAN AND ANTI-FEDERALIST POLICY. IT IS NOT MRS. THATCHER'S FAULT. THE RESPONSIBILITY OF OTHER COUNTRIES.

ABSTRACT: In the third part of the report Sergio Stanzani presented in Budapest, the Radical Party's First Secretary describes the party's initiatives for the political integration of the European Community and of the victories won by the Radical deputies in the European Parliament, in particular with regard to the approval of the Solemn Declaration on the States General of Europe.

(35th Congress of the Radical Party, Budapest, April 22-26, 1989)

It is not to be marvelled at if the first of the issues indicated by the Bologna Congress as fertile ground for our political action was that of reviving and accelerating the process of political integration in the European Community by directing it towards the creation of a United States of Europe.

The ideal of a world government will remain Utopian and never become a concrete political and historical possibility unless we have the capacity in the foreseeable future, hence in our own lifetime, to conceive a new constitutional society and to indicate and realise the new regional and inter-regional federal states which, without any doubt, necessary for escaping with the strength bestowed by liberty from the crisis of national and international chaos which today reign in the world.

It is urgently necessary that the idea of the interdependence of peoples and states should counter the 19th Century myth of national independence and the de facto reality of empires which begin by being colonial and end by being political, first European ones and then extra-European ones, of a few superpowers that divide the world among themselves. An Interdependence which allows the respective autonomous nationalities to govern themselves and to develop their peculiar ethnic and cultural characteristics while at the same time allowing for the democratic supra-national and federal governing of their great common problems and interests.

We must see to it that the change of any political systems, or crises occurring within the system of government of a world power does not produce - rather than higher forms of co-existence, governability and democracy - regressive forms of greater disorder and ingovernability such as happened when the Austro-Hungarian Empire fell and when the defeated ruling classes of World War II did not know how to counter the myth of nationalistic disintegration with a project for change and evolution towards a federal democracy.

For various reasons we feel that the Community of Western European States has the responsibility to point out to others the way to federal and supra-national solutions.

In the first place because they have been the first to open themselves to a community experience, conceiving and agreeing on, if not a federal statute, at least supra-national institutions and with a large common market, a noteworthy form of integration of their economies, which has facilitated their development and a high level of material well-being.

In the second place, because an analogous level of international political responsibility must be assumed corresponding to the level of economic power they have reached.

And finally, because if the Community's process of integration is to advance without reaching higher forms of law and democracy, if it should succumb to an anti-democratic backlash, the passing of an ever greater number of faculties from the member states to the Community will deprive the national parliaments of controlling power without these same powers having been transferred to the European Parliament.

We have tried to set back in motion the process of political unity of the European Community, launching the proposal to convene in Paris in 1989 a grand parliamentary session which we significantly have wanted to call the "States General of Europe".

Coming on the second centenary of the French Revolution and immediately following the third elections for the European Parliament, this grand assembly could have given a solemn send-off to a great period for the establishment of the United States of Europe by 1) giving constituent powers to the European Parliament; 2) the direct election by this parliamentary assembly of the President of the Community's Executive Commission, which until now has always been nominated by the inter-governmental summit of the EEC; 3) the election of a permanent President of the European Council (composed of the member countries' Heads of State and Government) who, being an expression of a majority of the European and national parliaments, would have reinforced the supra-national characteristics of this organisation.

This Radical proposal and initiative quickly became the initiative and proposal of the entire European Parliament. An absolute majority of 278 members of parliament, in fact, signed and approved a "solemn declaration of the European Parliament".

In Brussels and in Strasbourg the three Radical European deputies, not only in these sixteen months, have in effect established, at least potentially, that model of a trans-party and trans-national party that the Bologna Congress had indicated as necessary for democratic development in Europe. They have served as a point of convergence and unity for vast political majorities composed of members of parliament of all nationalities and all parties.

In June 1988, a majority of the European Parliament signed another declaration calling for advisory referendums in the twelve member countries, to coincide with the next European elections, to give the European Parliament constituent powers.

In September 1988, 303 European Deputies signed a resolution for giving the attribution of passive electorate in the European Parliament elections to the citizens of any member country of the Community.

A fourth resolution was adopted by the European Parliament, again by an absolute majority, to block any modification of the election laws during the last six months of the European Parliament's legislature.

The solemn decisions and requests of a European Parliament, which is the direct expression of the peoples of the Community, were ignored by the summits of the Heads of State and of Government held in Hannover and Rhodes.

This political paralysis of Europe is not only the fault of Mrs. Thatcher. One must at least acknowledge the merit of the British Prime Minister in never having hidden her hostility to political unity and the attribution of democratic and constituent powers to the European Parliament. Much greater seem to us to be the responsibilities of those states and those statesmen who continue to proclaim themselves Europeans while practising essentially anti-Community politics. First the economy and then politics, first the single market - with all the empty rhetoric about 1992, the mythical year in which it is due to come into effect - these seem to be the pass words of the Bonn and Paris governments, of Brussels and The Hague. And after their initial enthusiasm as neophytes of the Community, Madrid and Lisbon, seem to be aligning themselves with this position along with the President of the Community's Executive Commission who demands: "All the Single Act, nothing more and nothing less than the Single Act".

The Single Act is the statute of the anti-Federalist alliance which two years ago the governments of the EEC countries presented in antithesis to the project of a new treaty that the European Parliament urgently proposed to the governments and parliaments of the member countries.

We do not agree with this policy. We are not in agreement with the idea of "first the economy and then politics". There is no guarantee that if the single market is realised political union will necessarily follow. It is more probable that the lack of progress in political union will also bring down economic unity. But if it were to be realised it would be an ungoverned jungle, without laws and democratic controls.

We do not believe in the policy of small steps. The problems are looming and the necessary steps to be taken derive from our responsibilities. The policies of the national government summits of the member countries once again evade this responsibility. This simply means renouncing a policy that could resolve such problems as are occurring in Central and Eastern Europe, that are occurring in the Middle East, that are occurring even in terms of the deteriorating possibilities of survival throughout the world.

We can claim with pride that we have in all these years been the "party of the European Parliament". We have been so as the moving force and rallying point of its political majorities. But we have also tried to be it with our modest energies in relation to the political forces, the parties, and the national parliaments of at least a few of the member countries.

On this terrain we have had to submit to many humiliations, much rejection, many "fin de non recevoir" from governments, the possibilities of of meeting and organising positions similar to our own in parliaments and among the public. And, finally too - which is nothing to be overestimated but neither to be underestimated - we have been able to claim a few isolated victories.

I have already spoken about governments. The opinion polls of "Eurobarometer" have periodically borne witness to public attitudes: even in Mrs. Thatcher's Great Britain a majority of voters indicated they were in favour of delegating to the Community some of the most important faculties of individual nations (foreign affairs, research and technology, environment, relations with the Third World, defence). In the parliaments one can count on some prominent figures of a federalist orientation, and it is possible perhaps to establish trans-party inter-groups similar to the federalist inter-groups we have formed in Italy through the energy of the Federalist Movement and the Radical members of parliament, and to which belong Christian Democrats and Communists, Socialists and Republicans, Social Democrats and Liberals. And it is thanks to these inter-groups, and thanks to our initiative taken in common with the European Federalist Movement for a popular action law later approved in Parliament, that Italy is t

he only country that has decided to call on June 18, at the same time as the European elections, the referendum requested by the European Parliament. And it is also the only country to have accepted the other recommendation of giving the citizens of the other European countries the attribution of a passive electorate.

We do not believe that this choice made by the almost unanimous Italian Parliament can constitute a negative sign of isolation from the other chanceries of the Community. On the contrary, we believe that it can be a useful point of reference for interrupting the Community's present paralysis and revive the goal of European unity. We hope that it can open the way that other parliaments will follow to overcome the procrastination of their governments. This we hope for now will happen in the Belgian Parliament which, after Italy, is the second parliament to discuss a bill calling for a popular referendum.

We must now discuss the possibility and the way of going ahead.

We must, in particular, consider if it is refused as an official initiative of the Community's member states, the idea of the States General can be taken up and organised by us at the time of the second centenary of the French Revolution and the opening of the European Parliament's third legislature. We must ask ourselves if we have the strength and if the conditions exist for rallying Europe's federalist forces and the federalists in the national parliaments as well as the majority of the new Parliament.

It would not, I believe, only be a manifestation of opposition and a denunciation of the policies now prevalent among the top levels of the Community's governments. It would be an extraordinary demonstration of will and strength if we could succeed in realising this, for creating conditions analogous to those which two hundred years ago gave birth to the constituent assembly of the new France.