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THE RADICALS PROPOSAL FOR MEMBERSHIP FOR YUGOSLAVIA IN THE EUROPEAN COMMUNITY. THE INITIATIVES IN THE EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT TO AROUSE A REACTION OF THE COMMUNITY TO THE CRISIS IN THE YUGOSLAVIAN REPUBLIC. THE REQUEST FOR PERMISSION TO HOLD THE RADICAL PARTY CONGRESS IN ZAGABRIA. THE DIFFICULTY OF DIALOGUE WITH THE POLITICAL AND GOVERNMENT AUTHORITIES. THE FEDERAL COUNCIL MEETING AT BOHINJ. THE INTEREST ON THE PART OF THE PUBLIC AND THE PRESS.

ABSTRACT: In the tenth part of his report to the Radical Party Congress in Budapest, First Party Secretary Sergio Stanzani describes the Radical initiative for bringing Yugoslavia into the European Community and the reasons for the request to hold the party Congress in Zagabria.

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

The same reasons have impelled us, not for the first time, to make an analogous proposal for Yugoslavia.

Already in 1978 we maintained, along with Pannella, that the conquest of independence and of democracy as well as co-existence among a truly extraordinary number of nationalities, ethnic groups, and cultures that the Yugoslavian Constitution had guaranteed to its citizens, would prove to be insufficient in the long run. The myth of self-government and "non-alignment" among the blocs that had been the corner-stone of the independence and the singular choices of Yugoslavia, and which were so important for international stability, threatened to be factors creating isolation and crises. For economic reasons, certainly: because the development of an industrial country like Yugoslavia, which could aspire to taking off as Italy did in the Sixties or Spain in the Eighties, is unthinkable in a state of national isolation outside the boundaries of a large, semi-continental market.

It is absolutely hypocritical for the governments of countries like France, Germany, England, and Italy to exalt the opportuneness of Yugoslavia's "national independence" and "non-alignment" when they did not consider national independence sufficient for themselves and considered it necessary to band together into an economic community. But not only for economic reasons. One cannot indefinitely practise domestic liberalisation with a one-party system, remaining suspended between the dictatorship of the proletariat and democracy, without running the risk of sliding backwards. Nor could one hope to maintain in a kind of immobility the delicate federal equilibrium guaranteed by Tito among the diverse nationalities that make up Yugoslavia, without realising a higher level of economic and democratic development. We anxiously followed the signs of crisis in the relations among the various nationalities and cultures which recently exploded when autonomy was denied to Kossovo, and we have always maintained that

the problems of Yugoslavia were our problems too. We have fought and are fighting for the European Community to consider the problem of Yugoslavia as its own problem.

We maintained these same positions and ideas already ten years ago in Trieste and the Italian Parliament when we fought against the mixed Italo-Yugoslavian industrial zone foreseen for Carso by the Treaty of Osimo. Besides being an ecological crime, it would have been an economic and political error. We never tired of presenting it again and again to the Italian institutions, to the Yugoslavian government, in the European Parliament, the Council of Ministers and EC Commission.

For the time we found no agreement or even any encouragement or progress either in the Yugoslavian institutions or in those of the Community. The Community's Council of Ministers told us that it was "not the time" for considering Yugoslavian membership. More hypocritically, the Commission said that "Yugoslavia is a non-aligned country and it is a good thing for it to remain so". But in the Parliament, our ideas, even if defeated, are no longer isolated. Our proposals on this matter are now shared and subscribed to by a large number of members of Parliament of various countries and political leanings. At Brussels and Strasbourg we managed also on this matter to constitute a substantial number of members of Parliament who are friends of Yugoslavia. This fact is important because our Eurodeputies were not content to consider ideas and proposals that were not immediately practicable. Rather they increased the pressure on the Community for urgent and substantial economic aid to Yugoslavia.

The party's decision to become trans-national also allowed us to have a direct presence in Yugoslavia. Here I would like to greet the more than three hundred members of the Radical Party in the various republics of the federation. I recall the valuable relations that were established with some components of the Socialist Alliance of Yugoslavia as well as with some free associations that are openly fighting for democratic development and which have drawn amply on the statute and the goals of the Radical Party, first of all for Yugoslavia's joining the EEC. Among these I would like to mention the League of Slovenian Socialist Youth, the Group of '88, the Democratic Association of Yugoslavia, the Association For A United Europe of Split, and Zagabria's Association For The United States of Europe.

A petition for Yugoslavia joining the EEC, which was sent to the Yugoslavian authorities and to the Community, was signed by thousands of citizens and hundreds of intellectuals, among whom I would like to acknowledge and greet Milovan Gilas.

With our request to be allowed to hold our Congress at the beginning of the year in Zagabria, our proposals, our political initiative and our presence were the object of favourable comments as well as receiving correct and precise attention from the press. The Yugoslavian press furnished us with an example of freedom of information which, unfortunately, we have rarely had in the Italian press or that of other democratic countries.

I will not go over the details of the strenuous talks we had with the Belgrade government which ended with our not being able to hold our Congress in any city of the Federation. But our talks with the League of Slovenian Socialist Youth - who offered Marco Pannella a membership card - were extraordinary, as were those with the League of Yugoslavian Socialist Youth who allowed us to hold our Federal Council Meeting at Bohinj.

And today when, with joy, we are holding our Congress in Budapest, we have only one regret: that the same reply we received from the authorities in Budapest did not first come from those in Belgrade. But I want to express my hope that those talks can be taken up again very soon. We here reaffirm our friendship for the people and the institutions of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia.

In our European flag we have placed fourteen stars rather than twelve. We hope that Hungary and Yugoslavia will be the first two new states to join their stars to those of the other members of the Community.

This proposal of ours to enlarge the Community has received an argument in reply that I judge to be a pretext. New members would dilute the supra-national and Communitarian character of the EEC and would risk reducing it to a mere free-trade zone, a simple European market. But this is exactly what is happening and it is the member countries of the Community who are responsible for it: Great Britain and Denmark, as well as France and Germany. This is not the true reason for the opposition to enlargement. We maintain that behind this closed position there is, on the contrary, the protection of a privileged situation and the desire to remain indifferent and irresponsible towards the critical situations we have listed. The indifference and coldness shown towards Yugoslavia during these months is a serious sign of irresponsibility.

The building of a political and democratic Europe, if urgent for Western Europe, is literally a question of life or death for the countries of Eastern Europe.

It is in fact a vital necessity for the East that there should not only be a rich and protectionist economic Europe which conceives of its relations with the poorer countries of the East merely in terms of exploiting its work force and acquiring its promising markets. Only a politically united Europe, with supra-national democratic institutions, where the social and economic needs of the weakest sectors and regions can affirm themselves on the parliamentary and legislative levels, can guarantee a future of dialogue and tolerance among opposing interests. Not, certainly, the Europe of the EEC which concentrates in the Council of Ministers alone, in their closed and secret meetings, all legislative power and the overall orientation which trespass even on the executive powers. Not, certainly, the anti-democratic Europe of the EEC that foresees, once the single market is completed, the managing of 80% of the Community's economic, financial and fiscal decisions without the natural debate with a true legislat

ive power representing the diverse social interests of the regions of Europe.