ABSTRACT: Presents the supplement included in the newspaper containing a selection of speeches delivered by Marco Pannella (1) at the European Parliament. Reminds readers that an elections will be held in 1994 "for the fourth time" to renew the European Parliament, which is a "unique seat of debate". At the same time, it should be entrusted to the "good will" of the governments. Lists the initiatives taken by the radicals in the European Parliament.

(1994 - IL QUOTIDIANO RADICALE, Special European Parliament, 26 November 1993)

In a few months' time, in June 1994, elections will be held in all EU countries for the renewal of the European Parliament. For the fourth time, European citizens will be called to elect their representatives directly. These, nonetheless, still do not have the right to rule at the European level, to control the executive and, in other words, to be members of a real Parliament.

Nor have things changed much with the coming into effect of the Maastricht Treaty: in fact, the ruinous and anti-democratic system of intergovernmental cooperation to the detriment of an inter-institutional mechanism which would make the Strasbourg Parliament the European equivalent of the various Chambers of Deputies, Bundestag and national Houses of Commons, has become even stronger.

The European Parliament remains a unique seat of debate, an attempt to build a transnational political reality; at the same time, it is a place that entrusts its intentions to the good will of the governments so that they may be followed. In this context, it is obvious that the majority of deputies of the parties that dominate the political scene of the twelve member States adapts to the tedious bureaucratic routine which is imposed on it. The radicals have always believed, instead, in the role the European Parliament could and can carry out. The Spinelli project of a European federation is well-known. From within the European Parliament the radicals launched the international campaign against starvation and environmental emergency; to disband the Soviet bloc and reinstate freedom in the countries of central and eastern Europe; for an anti-prohibitionist policy on drugs and to defeat the drug trade; to ask, since Tito's death, the immediate economic and political entry of Yugoslavia in the EU and avert the c

entrifugal drive which them emerged; to overcome a Third World policy which has lead many countries of Africa and Asia to ruin and to refute a number of commonplaces on South Africa or Israel; to indicate that the values of democracy and rule of law should have an absolute value throughout the world; to ask for the creation of a United States of Europe and to denounce, from Europe, the corruption and the mismanagement in Italy during the years of party regime. This selection of speeches by Marco Pannella at the European Parliament throughout the years means to be a small testimony of all this, not out of self-complacency or to show that "we were right", but to prove, from within the European Parliament that a new reality can emerge if there is the political will and to affirm that the lack of will to create new things causes things to be consumed forever.

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.