SUMMARY: the author describes the situation of the Radical party in Yugoslavia, where strong democratic reforms are being carried out that aim to Yugoslavia's entrance in the European Community. The presence of the Radical initiative; the Radical Association for the United States of Europe officially recognized among the new political movements; the project of taking part in the next elections on the 14th of April.

(Radical News n.51 of the 2nd of March 1990)

Maybe the only Soviet reality of today can be compared to the resistances and the innovative pressures that are currently operating in Yugoslavia. Nationalism and communism, federal reality and separatism and centralism, ethnical and religious conflicts, European aspirations and 19th Century rivalries, reformism and conservatism: it seems as if the great balcanic pot is boiling again as in the times of the Habsburg decline.

The award for an advanced, anti-dogmatic and reformist socialism, has long since been lost, and Yugoslavia has been a bewildered and perplexed witness of the turmoils that have been going on in the other communist countries. Then, gradually, partly out of example and part out of fear, even the slow-moving Yugoslavian communist bureaucracies have started conceding that which elsewhere had been taken away by the huge movements of protest, by the "candle revolutions".

And so in Slovenia the Communist party, that had still been the promoter of a weary but firm movement of democratic reform, depending largely upon the "Socialist Youth", has been forced, in these lat months, to accelerate its process of transformation at such a point that it has changed its name and its symbol in view of the approaching elections. A meeting with the oppositions has defined in the past months the modalities for free and pluralist elections.

"Europe now!", this is the slogan with which the Slovenian former Communists, today the party of democratic reform, will present themselves at the polls. It is a slogan that the Radicals know well, that has seen the Radical party protagonist of demonstrations in Brussels as in the whole of Europe, it is the same slogan that two years ago on the walls of Lubljana greeted the summoning of the first public assembly held there by the Radical party. An undoubtedly meaningful coincidence.

Perhaps it is owing to this too that precisely with this Yugoslavian party it has been possible to hold a meeting at the highest level between a Radical delegation (Stanzani, Bonino and Pannella) and a delegation of the renewed party (the President Ribicic and the members of the Presidency: Juratovec, Bekes...).

In Croatia as well, the party is confronted, with much more difficulty, with the new democratic requests. Only in the last month an electoral law has been prepared "from the summit" that will enable to deal with a democratic method with the approaching republican elections, summoned for the 14th of April.

Among the new parties and political associations, that have recently been legalized, there is the Radical Association for the United States of Europe (Rused) with Vito Cesmadziski as Secretary (member of the federal Council of the Radical party), Zeljko Rosko, journalist, as vice-president, and Zoran Juricin as treasurer.

Upon initiative of these and other Croatian Radicals (up to now there are 55 members of the Radical party in Croatia) an electoral list is being prepared called "European non-violent and green federalist list", uniting severing components of the Croatian political milieu. In particular this electoral coalition includes part of the dissolved "Croatian Socialist youth", exponents of the green, feminist and other groups. At the same time the Radical Croatians are gathering signatures for a petition to submit to the Croatian authorities and to the European Parliament. This petition asks to adopt all the necessary resolutions in order to enable Yugoslavia to enter the European Community, "as a first step toward the creation of the United States of Europe".

These initiatives have been publicly presented in Zagreb by Marco Pannella at a crowded public assembly that greatly captured the interest of the medias.

These days we are preparing to launch a great enrollment campaign that will certainly be facilitated by the interest of the media, the approaching elections, but above all by the originality of the Radical proposal, even in its trans-partitical significance.