36th RADICAL PARTY CONGRESS

ABSTRACT: Document on the European Union and federalism prepared for the 36th Congress of the Radical Party (Rome, Hotel Ergife, 30 April - 3 May)

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1. Until today the goal of European Union has been seen mostly in economic terms: the Union is necessary to ensure stable well-being, harmonious development, balanced growth, equilibrium between the richer and poorer areas of Europe, thus making western Europe a large single market, with a single currency.

All this, it is rightly concluded, cannot be implemented without institutions that are not only truly sopranational and federal, but whose responsibility extends beyond the monetary system to the whole economy, and particularly to the finance, budget and incomes policies, and the policies on scientific research, pollution and aid to the third world.

2. This goal remains valid, but a new one has been imposed by facts that had remained in the background until recently, and have today been forefronted by the epoque-making events that have occurred in Europe since 1989.

The process of European unification that has been implemented and is being implemented in the European Community has become outdated and anachronistic and must be drastically changed because:

- it is only western;

- it is only economic;

- its institutions are too fragile and not genuinely federal.

In place of all this the process must become:

- pan-European

- extend to foreign policy, defence, the protection of human rights and of minorities;

- generate a true European Federal State with:

a legislative government in which it is exclusively the president's task to appoint and annul the appointment of ministers;

two legislative chambers, consisting of the European Parliament and a Chamber of States, instead of the current Chamber of Ministers, which assumes a solely legislative role and meets in public sessions with a majority voting system;

a Court of Justice with the power to directly execute its decisions, without going through national political or administrative or legal channels.

Solely in this way will the Union be able to :- extend without becoming detached, though at first the unification must only involve the Twelve Countries of the Community (or be limited to some of them) since without the above-mentioned institutional changes the whole process of unification is destined to fail;

- give the Countries of central and eastern Europe the aid necessary for them to become full member of the European "common home" as soon as possible;

- especially construct a sufficiently solid framework within which to solve democratically and pacifically, under the aegis of federal law, the ethnic conflicts arising from the ruins of "real socialism" and Soviet imperialism.

3. The Maastricht agreements appear inadequate when faced with this far-reaching prospect. And this has become doubly evident through the fierce conflict in Yugoslavia. This conflict has been a kind of premonition of the vast conflagration that may involve the whole of central and eastern Europe. But the European Community has proved powerless, or worse still, indifferent in this situation.

4. There emerges the need for an immediate, large-scale initiative involving the whole of Europe: a strategy that must be put into operation from now until the end of the century to avoid these risks; to ensure Europe's independence; to guarantee security from new threats, which the Gulf War has already shown to be many and serious, just as it yet again revealed the powerlessness and division of the Europeans and the lack of a common defence policy.

Here too it is the facts themselves that point out the path to be followed.

5. The fourth European Parliamentary elections are scheduled to be held in 1994. Since this is virtually only a consultancy body, it is certain that, things being what they are, public opinion will be even more indifferent to them than during the last elections, and consequently this body will become even more politically delegitimized.

Things will radically change, however - and in the electoral battle there will clearly be a European front and a non-European front - if all the Europeanist and federalist forces combine and unite their efforts in a large-scale campaign to mobilize political and social forces and public opinion in the twelve countries, so that a procedure is put into operation similar to that which led to the "Ad hoc Assembly" - the then European Parliament - being given the task of drawing up the European Constitution.

This campaign must succeed, by the end of 1993, in having the twelve governments - or at least most of them - solemnly decide to entrust the new European Parliament that will be set up the following year with the task of drawing up, within 10 months of its election, the Constitution of the Pan-European Federation: with the additional - though decisive - commitment that this project will be directly subjected for ratification, without changes, to the respective national parliaments, or, depending on the constitutional requirements of each of them, to a referundum.

Moreover it must be added that should all the twelve countries not agree to this, the task of drawing up the text of the Union will have to be entrusted only to the members of the European Parliament from those states which, in this case and in this constituting capacity, will meet separately, with the possible participation of representatives from those countries wishing to join, especially from eastern Europe, that have accepted the goal of political Union.

The campaign in question will be completed and sealed in the second half of 1993, in a major 3rd "European Congress of the Hague", in which the federalist commitment for the next European elections will be solemnly made official and sealed.

Only on the condition of this commitment, and with this fundamental integration, can Maastricht be judged less severely than above.

6. The Europeanist and federalist forces are too weak today to take on the task of this large-scale European mobilization; they mostly lack the keen critical spirit, and the capacity to stimulate and, if necessary, contest the national governments and political forces: and not only to flatter and applaud them despite their slowness, deficiencies and half-measures.

But they, and all of us, are being given a particularly good opportunity. While Reunited Germany - strong in its economy, in the large number of its inhabitants and in the influence it can exercise on central and eastern Europe, or rather on the whole of the continent - has the capacity to stand alone and take no interest in the European Union, and while increasing forces of German society are urging this, on the contrary the German government and Chancellor Kohl, with great political far-sightedness and courage, have shown and are showing - in deeds as well as words - that they are convinced that the Union of the continent is more necessary than ever to allow a healthy development of Germany and channel the dynamism of the country along a clear European course.

Chancellor Kohl's position has been weakened - guiltily and irresponsibly - by the other eleven member states, which at Maastricht refused, for the moment, the political Union that Kohl requested to offset the sacrifice of the DM on the altar of European Unity.

Nothing, however, leads us to foresee that by the decisive deadline, postponed foolishly to the end of the century, when the process of integration is to be decided, Germany will have a Chancellor and a government as firmly committed to the European policy. On the contrary, it is reasonable to fear the opposite.

The Europeanist forces must therefore make a "pactum tacitum de Europa condenda" with the current German government so that the above-mentioned large-scale campaign for the European Constituent is efficient and successful. Thanks to such an ally it is not utopian to hope that this action will succeed in the short time at our disposal.

Time is working against Europe, and this is perhaps the last chance history will offer our generation.