ABSTRACT: Faced with the latest failure of inter-governmental and diplomatic methods, we must mobilise parliaments and citizens to prevent the ratification of the treaties put forward by the Maastricht summit. At the same time, it is absolutely necessary to relaunch the democratic constituent process, entrusting the task of writing the Constitution of the United States of Europe to the European Parliament, the legitmate representative of the people.

This article was written on 2 February 1992

(THE PARTY NEW - N. 5 - FEBRUARY 1992)

The texts of the provisional treaties on political union and economic and monetary union (EMU), which are to pave the way for European Union, approved by heads of state and government at the Maastricht summit on December 9 and 10 1991, are due to be signed by individual governments towards the end of February 1992 and ratified by the end of the year (as long as there are no delays, which are not unheard of in the Community).This has been heralded almost unanimously as an historic occasion: the creation of a United Europe. But it should be viewed differently: the treaty that institutes political union - based on the old treaties signed at Paris (ECCA) and Rome (EECE and EECA), modified and expanded into the Single Treaty,and the decisions taken at Maastricht concerning foreign policy, security and social policy - is not a step forward on a political or institutional level; the EMU treaty is fraught with uncertain deadlines. The results are even more disappointing if comparison is made with the expectations ra

ised before the Summit by a number of political leaders (on the basis of committments taken on at the end of the two inter-governmental conferences at Rome, on political union and on EMU) and by the European parliament: the joint statement issued by the Foreign Ministers of France, Dumas, Germany, Genscher, and Spain, Ordonez; the letter sent by Mr Mitterrand and Mr Kohl to the then President of the Community, Mr Ruud Lubbers; the text of the resolution approved by the Strasbourg parliament.

Amongst other things, the documents contained the desire to continue towards a European Union of a "federal nature"; to begin the formulation of common foreign policy and security arrangements; to resort to qualified majority voting at the Council for the application of this policy; to associate the European parliament with the formulation of foreign policy and control of its execution; to allow the executive Committee the right to launch initiatives and to perform true governmental functions; to establish the power of legislative co-decision of Parliament and the Council; to set up a single community structure for foreign policy and security, trade, development co-operation and monetary policy.

At Maastricht, all these good intentions were forgotten. The "federal nature" was replaced by the desire for "ever closer union"; the effectiveness of foreign policy is conditioned by an elaborate mechanism of a purely inter-governmental nature, wherby in the rare event of a majority decision the matter has to already have been unanimously passed by the Council. Unanimity is also required not just for modifications and amendments, but also for all the most important topics, including: the joining of new member countries; an extension of Community powers; the concession of European citizenship and the free movement of people; problems concerning harmonization of taxes; laws concerning certain sectors of environmental policy; deliberation on fundamental sectors of economic and monetary policy; decisions concerning national resources; choices about the location of Community headquarters; the signature of certain international agreements.

Further disappointment came from the treaty on economic and monetary union, whose content and mechanisms must be seen in the context of the extremely loosetime-scale;the international or domestic problems of individual members that may arise (as in the case of the European Monetary System); problems linked with the expected admission of other European nations to the Community; the technocratic management of the process, which looks like having a strictly monetarist slant; and lastly, but most importantly, the lack of any parallel progress regarding political and institutional matters. The accomplishment of the goals laid down in the treay on EMU will thus be bound up with the tricky establishment of cohesive majorities on specific topics, which will have to oppose and overcome natural, tried and tested inter-governmental initiatives launched by lobbies and national interests.

More serious still is the stone-walling on an institutional level. The Commission, whose mandate will coincide with the five-year term of the European Parliament (from which it will receive its investiture), has had its political role reduced yet further by the creation of new inter-governmental bodies: the committee for foreign policy, the economic and monetary committee and the committee for the free movement of citizens.

As for the European Parliament, the request for legislative co-decision has been totally disregarded by the new measures put in place: co-decision, in fact, applies to just seven sectors of the internal Market (which will be in use up to December 31 1992, when, according to the Single Act, the single European Market will come into being); to three issues concerning long-term programmes (research, the environment and Europe-wide networks); to four fields (education, health, culture and consumer rights), with the proviso that governments have expressed the desire that progress is made through "recommendations" and not through binding decisions. The same process of co-decision, which allows for an attmpet at conciliation should there be disagreement between Parliament and the Council, gives the Council the chance to adopt the initial position, therby leaving Parliament with just the right to veto, in other words the power to repeal but not to initiate legislation.

Faced with the Maastricht "hoax" we must take action right away over the next few months to block the ratification of the two treaties and, at the same time, take up the initiative to entrust the mandate for the re-drawing of the Constitution of the United States of Europe to the European Parliament, thereby protecting the institutional committee's project for the European Parliament (drawn up on the basis of Altiero Spinelli's project for European Union), approved on November 12 1990 by the Strasbourg assembly.

Action during this constituent phase should follow the model of that undertaken to great effect by the Radical Party and the European Federalist Movement, in collaboration with all other federalist organizations and politicians from various parties, gathered together under the umbrella of the Federalist Intergroup at the Italian Parliament. Similar action, which led to a referendum in Italy during the 1989 European elections and gathered the consensus of 80% of Italians, must now be undertaken in the other eleven parliaments of European nations.

A federal blue-print is now necessary and pressing in order to fight the lack of democracy that is debasing national parliaments which find themselves divested of some of their powers without a parallel evolution of the powers of legislation and control at European Parliament level. This failure affects countries that have recently been freed from totalitarian regimes both politically and economically. Further delays could push them towards the spectre ofnationalisms, signs of which we have already seen in upsetting examples of racial intolerance and an inability of nations, regions and ethnic groups to construct inter-cultural and political relations.