V.

OUR IDEA OF EUROPE

ABSTRACT: In the fifth part of his report to the Radical Party Congress in Budapest, First Party Secretary Sergio Stanzani expounds the Radicals' conception of political Europe which must not close itself up in its material well-being but become a home for democracy and peace open to the countries of Eastern Europe, Israel, and Africa.

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

For us, political Europe, the United States of Europe is, like any other political institution, a means and not an end.

We are not preaching a Superstate.

We do not intend to substitute the myth of the nation state with that of the European Nation.

Hence, for us Europe is not a cold institutional objective, but a practical objective, an ethical-political objective.

The federal unity of Europe means to us the possibility of confronting and managing in the most rapid and effective way the environmental crisis, which could turn out to be catastrophic for humanity in a short time.

It means being able to confront in new terms the problems of the Third World, underdevelopment, extermination from starvation, the condition of desperation and misery to which a large part of the world's population has been abandoned.

It means being able to fight with the strength of unity the scourge of criminality and drugs which afflicts the richest and most developed nations.

For us Europe is not a small fortress of twelve countries closed up in themselves to defend their state of development and their privileged market.

For us Europe is also Israel.

It is also Yugoslavia.

It is also Eurafrica because of the historical debt Europe has contracted with its ex colonies.

It is also the refusal to renounce concerning itself with the "other Europe", the refusal to renounce a democracy which binds us to the peoples of the Soviet Union, Hungary, Poland and Czechoslovakia.

Europe, finally, must mean to us the possibility of defending throughout the world human rights in their struggle against violence, totalitarianism and intolerance.

If, however, we look at each of these things, we can become aware just how far reality is from our desires and our needs.