ABSTRACT: In this article, published by one of the most widespread and authoritative daily papers of Czechoslovakia, Marco Pannella urges the Czechoslovakian, Hungarian and Polish democrats to endorse the line advocated by the European parliament instead of the line of the national states of Western Europe, applying for membership in the E.C. now and fostering the project of the creation of the United States of Europe, to avoid Gorbachev's "common European home" or Mitterrand's "Confederation" from becoming the instrument that can hinder the birth of the most modernly democratic and of the strongest State of the world, aimed at achieving a world community based on law, on political democracy, on nonviolence and peace, on justice and freedom.

(Mlada Fronta Dnes of 6 November 1990)

Let's face it: the European Parliament - the only E.C. democratic institution which represents 340 million European citizens - is not in favour of Gorbachev's "Common Home" or of the "Confederation" suggested by Mitterrand. The European Parliament supports the United States of Europe ("European Union"), a federal sovereign State, a federal Constitution, a State based on laws, in the context of which the autonomies, the interdependence, the freedoms, the cultures are enhanced and democratically organized, as it is or should be in the United States or in the new Russia advocated by Eltsin's "Radicals", by the anti-Jacobin and anti-nationalist federalists.

The "Common Home", the "Confederation" should represent the extension and the historical and political projection of the European Federation, of the political and institutional unity of the countries and of the citizens that are part or that will become part of the current EEC. Otherwise, this "Common Home" and this "Confederation" are nothing but the instrument to prevent the birth of the most modernly democratic and of the strongest (from a commercial, productive, scientific, numerical, cultural and political point of view) State of the world, aimed at achieving a world community based on law, political democracy, nonviolence and peace, justice and freedom. Otherwise, they are nothing but the occasion to dodge the urgent problems relative to the survival of the planet and of mankind, after the tragedy of the Nazi-fascisms and "real socialisms", the advent of which was largely favoured by the "real democracies", by the national States and by their leading classes.

As far back as 1984, the European Parliament had officially adopted and proposed to the other E.C. institutions and to the member countries a new Treaty, a sort of Constitution of the European Union. In most of the twelve member States, in the elections of 1984 and of 1989 for the European Parliament, the electorate had supported this project and this method.

The cost of the political and democratic non-Europe is becoming unsustainable and tragical. Its absence as an immediate alternative, as an operative and feasible alternative, could plunge Central and Eastern Europe, who are coming out of the Communist system, into chaos and economic, productive and social disaster, forcing it to a sort of national-democratic "restoration" of a past which contributed to the advent of the fascist and communist dictatorships, as Czechoslovakia in particular well knows.

The citizens of the two Republics of Germany, who introduced the 17 million citizens of the former DDR unconditionally into the European Community, have obviously realized this.

Now I ask you, I ask President Havel, I ask the Czechoslovakian (and Hungarian and Polish) democrats, to endorse the line of the European Parliament, and not that of the national states of Western Europe. With the "Confederation", every member State other than Germany above all and France and Great Britain secondarily, would be politically and institutionally peripheral and marginal, as well as economically, productively, culturally and socially inferior.

If it is not organized by a democratic State, institutionally democratic and multinational, based on human, civil and political rights equal for all, in each country at at every latitude, the "economic" and "cultural" unity will be a pure abstraction. We will all be in the hands of the military-industrial and agro-industrial complexes, which are undemocratic and incapable of ensuring any order in the world worthy of such name, and which for decades aimed at the stabilization of the communist dictatorships, of the Soviet empire and at the destabilization of the world, firstly of the non-European and "non-Western" areas, selling weapons to all the dictators of the planet, in primis Saddam Hussein, Menghistu and Assad, in conformity with Moscow's and Prague's one-time politics.

"Democracy in a single country" or in a single "system of countries" is not feasible in the long run, just as "socialism in a single country" (fortunately) wasn't. The problem of "real democracy", which could be to democracy as "real socialism" was to the ideals of the socialist and libertarian humanism, which is the cause of the tragedy of party power in such a great part of Europe, should not be underestimated, if we don't want to repeat the tragedy of the policies of Daladier and Chamberlain, of Benes and Masaryk before year 2000.

If Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Poland - together or separately - applied for membership in the EEC now, endorsing the European Union and encouraging its supporters, the European parliament, the governments such as the Italian, the Belgian, the Dutch ones, and strong German, French, Spanish groups, the cause would be won, and the human, civil and political rights to democracy and legality would represent the irreplaceable basis of the State and of the social order.

Together with my colleagues from the Radical Party and with European federalists of all parties, I have more than once received the formal support of the absolute majority of European parliamentarians. In Italy, where we are an opposition, we contributed to forming strong "European majorities" in Parliament during at least five legislatures, and in the three legislatures of the Parliament directly elected by the European people.

Today, the conflict is no longer between Europeanists and overt Anti-Europeanists. The conflict today is between generic "Europeanists", who emphasize questionable feelings and reversible abstractions, and who talk about "Europe" in terms of "destiny", a sort of Mystic Body or Communion of Saints, or as a "culture", and who maintain as many privileges, powers and subpowers, inequalities and injustices, "protected" and "historically "realistic democracies as they can, and between those who want to laically, build federalism, European federalism, an intransigent democracy, a society and a State based on laws, starting with the immediate transformation of the EEC into a European Union.

To obtain this, we need to struggle with force, determination and a sense of urgency.

There can be no ecological, juridical, economic, social, cultural safety in the illusion, in the sorrow, infecund, "realistic" utopia, in the persistence of the divorce between science, conscience, human feelings and "politics" and power.

A number of demonstrations in Prague which seemed to foreshadow something new appear to be on the contrary the continuity of old impotences.

The hundreds of Czechoslovakian citizens who are creating, they too, a transnational and transpartisan Radical Party, which has more members in Moscow than in Milan, in Prague than in Palermo, are the precious testimony of a "possibility" versus a dangerous and negative "probability". I can assure them that they are - unfortunately few - following the path advocated without hesitation by the European parliament and by the people of Errope who have been able to express their opinion democratically.