ABSTRACT: Unkown and terrible threats are unfolding in the world: the greenhouse effect, desertification, famine, the irreversible pollution of air, water and earth and international organised crime. World leaders make feeble attempts and conjure up illusory solutions which are authoritarian and totalitarian and suffocate peoples' rights in the name of "superior interests". A new humanity is needed, a new ability to join together science and democratic participation so that future opportunties can be taken and the quality of life can be improved by preserving the environment within the traditions of ecology. However, an ecological policy will be impossible unless politics itself becomes ecological. The traditional, national parties are impotent in front of these threats and incapable of standing up to the multinational criminal and polluting powers. They need to pass the task on to others who are better equipped for the times and problems, others who are not restricted by national consideratons, but consider

the planet as a whole. We are ecologists and democrats who believe in nonviolence and European federalism. We are anti-nationalists.

(The Party New, n.1, June 1991)

It is necessary to conceive, promote and organise the powers and instruments of transnational and sopranational government, the federal, regional communities and the international and world structures and procedures which appear to be ever more necessary and urgent to save the world from catastrophe and to provide answers to the important questions of our time.

The radioactivity from Chernobyl did not recognise physical frontiers and was able, and in fact did, move beyond the area of the Ukraine and Russia. Acid rain falls where the winds and clouds carry it, often far from the origins of the poisonous industrial emissions. There is not one greenhouse effect in Lithuania and another in Italy. These are some of the many problems that result from the growing integration and interdependence of the world and these cannot be faced by governments with old policy making instruments. These instruments are derived from the national political parties, which have been created in the last century and the national states that have been formed in the last five centuries. Both have stunted the historical evolution of Europe in the last two centuries.

This simple truth is not valid only for the examples we have given and which result from the environmental conscience of our generation and of our time. In reality it is valid for all the great problems of this era which are transnational and therefore shared amongst as all; they include the nuclear dangers, the banning of chemical weapons, an end to starvation, disease and underdevelopment in many parts of Africa, Asia and Latin America and on the edges of the what is considered to be the centre of the developed world. They also involve the effects of use of modern technology in work organisation and regulation of a capitalist market which does not recognise frontiers and is totally uncontrolled. Finally, they also involve the affermation of human rights which are promised, but in reality, denied by the majority of governments and states and the problems of different ethnic groups living in the same territory, which are sure to grow as the effects of migration are felt. From being ecologist, democratic and

non-violent we are also federalist, in the European sense and consistently anti-nationalist. As western Europeans we are unhappy that the process of European integration has come to a halt. An economic community and common market will not be enough and a federal union needs to be promoted immediately. As democrats we have watched, with sympathy, the suffering and efforts of those who are battling in many parts of the world to regain their democratic rights and national autonomy, but we know that this autonomy, by itself, will not be enough to resolve the problems which the old empires have left behind and aggravated. We are internationalists and anti- militarists who are not content just calling for peace, but who also want to formulate a new international law around the laws, structures and decisions of the United Nations. This new law will be founded on democratic, just, tolerant values that respect human rights and will have the necessary instruments to make it effective.