from the Czech newspaper "Mlada Fronta Dnes", November 6, 1990

Democracy cannot be achieved in one country only, just as "real socialism" wasn't.

ABSTRACT: Recalls that the European Parliament adopted in 1984 a new Treaty that was "voted" by the electorate at the following elections. Today, the cost of a "non-Europe" is becoming "unbearable and tragic", and is causing a "national-democratic restoration" in Eastern Europe. "Democracy in one country only" is impossible, just as "socialism in one country" was. If things go on this way, we will end up having regimes of "real democracy" and perhaps the "tragedy" of the policies of Daladier, Benes and Masaryk.

(1994 - IL QUOTIDIANO RADICALE, 23 November 1993)

As early as in 1984, the European Parliament had officially adopted and proposed to the other E.C. institutions and Member States a new Treaty--a sort of Constitution of the European Union. In most of the Twelve states at the elections of 1984 and later in those of 1989 for the European Parliament, the electorate had approved this project and this method.

Now the cost of a non-Europe is becoming unbearable and tragic. Its absence as an immediate alternative, already formally established and operative, risks throwing Central and Eastern Europe, which has freed itself from the communist regime, into economic, productive and social chaos, forcing it to a sort of national-democratic restoration of a past that was among the causes of the advent of the fascist and communist dictatorships, as the Czechoslovaks in particular must remember well.

The Germans of the two Republics, who decided to include the 17 million citizens of the former Democratic Germany into the European Community without conditions, have understood this well.

Now I ask the Czechoslovak (and Hungarian and Polish) democrats to adopt the line of the European Parliament, not that of the national states and of the European West (...).

If it is not organized by a multinational and institutional democracy based on human, civil and political rights of the individual, equal for all, in every country and place, the "economic" and "cultural" unity will be nothing but a facade. We will all be in the hands of the military-industrial complex, of the agro-industrial complex, which are undemocratic and incapable of guaranteeing any order worthy of this name (...).

"Democracy in a single country" or in a single "system of countries" is not achievable, in the long term, just as "socialism in a single country" wasn't. The problem of "real democracy" - which risks bearing the same relation to democracy as "real socialism" did to the ideas of the socialist and libertarian humanism, which in so many parts of Europe generated the tragedy of party power - should not be underestimated unless we want to relive the tragedy of the policies of Daladier, Chamberlain, Benes and Masaryk..

Translator's notes

(1) PANNELLA MARCO. Pannella Giacinto, known as Marco. (Teramo 1930). Currently President of the Radical Party's Federal Council, which he is one of the founders of. At twenty national university representative of the Liberal Party, at twenty-two President of the UGI, the union of lay university students, at twenty-three President of the UNURI, national union of Italian university students. At twenty-four he advocates, in the context of the students' movement and of the Liberal party, the foundation of the new radical party, which arises in 1954 following the confluence of prestigious intellectuals and minor democratic political groups. He is active in the party, except for a period (1960-1963) in which he is correspondent for "Il Giorno" in Paris, where he established contacts with the Algerian resistance. Back in Italy, he commits himself to the reconstruction of the radical Party, dissolved by its leadership following the advent of the centre-left. Under his indisputable leadership, the party succeeds in

promoting (and winning) relevant civil rights battles, working for the introduction of divorce, conscientious objection, important reforms of family law, etc, in Italy. He struggles for the abrogation of the Concordat between Church and State. Arrested in Sofia in 1968 as he is demonstrating in defence of Czechoslovakia, which has been invaded by Stalin. He opens the party to the newly-born homosexual organizations (FUORI), promotes the formation of the first environmentalist groups. The new radical party organizes difficult campaigns, proposing several referendums (about twenty throughout the years) for the moralization of the country and of politics, against public funds to the parties, against nuclear plants, etc., but in particular for a deep renewal of the administration of justice. Because of these battles, all carried out with strictly nonviolent methods according to the Gandhian model - but Pannella's Gandhi is neither a mystic nor an ideologue; rather, an intransigent and yet flexible politician - h

e has been through trials which he has for the most part won. As of 1976, year in which he first runs for Parliament, he is always elected at the Chamber of Deputies, twice at the Senate, twice at the European Parliament. Several times candidates and local councillor in Rome, Naples, Trieste, Catania, where he carried out exemplary and demonstrative campaigns and initiatives. Whenever necessary, he has resorted to the weapon of the hunger strike, not only in Italy but also in Europe, in particular during the major campaign against world hunger, for which he mobilized one hundred Nobel laureates and preeminent personalities in the fields of science and culture in order to obtain a radical change in the management of the funds allotted to developing countries. On 30 September 1981 he obtains at the European parliament the passage of a resolution in this sense, and after it several other similar laws in the Italian and Belgian Parliament. In January 1987 he runs for President of the European Parliament, obtaini

ng 61 votes. Currently, as the radical party has pledged to no longer compete with its own lists in national elections, he is striving for the creation of a "transnational" cross-party, in view of a federal development of the United States of Europe and with the objective of promoting civil rights throughout the world.