Speech delivered by Marco Pannella (1) at the European Parliament on January 18th, 1989

ABSTRACT: In his answer to President Delors, according to whom the Commission has given priority to "exploring an enlargement" of the European policy, Pannella asks whether it is the enlargement which is "part of things" and which seems to generate "all over the world" a "revolt against political democracy", or instead an enlargement "towards a United States of Europe". Failing a "current point of reference towards the political unity" there is the risk of "backpedaling". Pannella recognizes Delor's passion, but acknowledges that the European Parliament does not share "the same attitude". It suffers from an "identity crisis". Delor's tactics, so realistic, is "commendable", but...

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

Mr President of the Parliament,

Mr President of the Commission,

Unfortunately I cannot address myself to the President of the Council as well. I hope you will accept the fact that the radicals always stress criticism and differences.

Mrs President Delors, you say the Commission has already adopted a position of principle - priority to exploring an enlargement - but Parliament has expressed its opinion on the issue, and are we not in the face of a historical decision? What enlargement are we talking about? The enlargement that is part to things, an enlargement towards rebellion, towards political democracy, that is boiling up in Yugoslavia, in Hungary and in many places of Europe? Or is it rather an enlargement towards a United States of Europe, a common security policy, a common political democracy, a common democratic, political and oligarchic policy? We should be wary of the fact, Mr President, that in the lack of a point of reference towards the political unity, towards the European Union, a United States of Europe, we are witnessing a nationalist regression, and that such countries, if they succeed in breaking away from the Soviet empire with the consent of Moscow, will face no other alternative but subordinately accepting a market e

conomy, an economic space, while unable to accept the conception, the force of the democratic state, of the rule of law, of a democratically elected Parliament, of a democratically elected executive and of a state control of the law.

This explains today's urgency! Mr President Delors, the passion you put in a certain idea of Europe, at the service of a certain method. You combine passion and rigour, it must be acknowledged. What is lacking is an equivalent attitude on the part of Parliament. This Parliament suffers from an identity crisis. It has given up the project of a Treaty. It has given up its methods, its president, who until recently talked about being born British and wanting to die European, who has obviously mistaken the House of Lords with the House of Academicians, where one becomes immortal.

It was you, Mr President Delors, not the president of our Parliament, who welcomed the decision on the general states of our Parliament, a decision that goes to your credit. The European Parliament has instead relinquished this idea. Fortunately, someone has mentioned, like you did, Altiero Spinelli (2), who considered the political European union as an essential means to achieve a true economic and monetary union, and especially to avoid a jungle where the poorest countries of Europe, the most alienated one, for historical reasons, could be totally absorbed and submerged.

Mr President Delors, you have not talked enough of the political union. You said, "We are an economic space, and we want to become an economic and monetary union". You talked about a system of banks, etc. I understand your realism or your tactics. But I think you are talking this way so that the Council will listen to you.

This said, Mr President Delors, I have to add that this Parliament has missed the opportunity of giving the inter-institutional dialectics its identity. As radicals, as federalists, we believe the contribution we can offer is that of a Parliament that recover its identity, methods and texts!

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.

(2) SPINELLI ALTIERO. ( Rome 1907 - 1982). Italian politician. During fascism, from 1929 to 1942, he was imprisoned as leader of the Italian Communist Youth. In 1942 co-author, with Ernesto Rossi, of the "Manifesto of Ventotene", which states that only a federal Europe can remove the return of fratricide wars in the European continent and give it back an international role. At the end of the war he founded, with Rossi, Eugenio Colorni and others, the European federalist Movement. After the crisis of the European Defence Community (1956), he became member of the European Commission, and followed the evolution of the Community structures. In 1979 he was elected member of the European Parliament on the ticket of the Italian Communist Party (PCI), becoming the directive mind in the realization of the draft treaty adopted by that parliament in 1984 and known as the "Spinelli Project".