[fse-esf] Reconstitute Spinelli's Project

[Mikael Book]

Reconstitute Spinelli's Project


Today, 31 August 2007, Altiero Spinelli would have become hundred years
old. In order to tame the all too  "free movement of capital", It is more
necessary than ever that we reconstitute  the nearly forgotten project of
Spinelli.




On February 14, 1984, the European Parliament created the European Union
by approving Traité instituant l ' union Européenne, i.e. a constitution
for EU. [1]

Or so it figured. 

The decision was taken with 237 votes for and 31 against (43 absent). A
safe majority. But the constitution of 1984 quickly passed into oblivion,
and  its drafter, the Italian politician Altiero Spinelli (August 31,
1907 - May 23, 1986) would  also be forgotten.

One  of the two main buildings of the  European Parliament carries his
name. The new construction 1993 was baptized Bâtiment A. Spinelli.

Yet when German Minister for Foreign Affairs Joschka Fischer in May 2000
re-started the discussion about the constitution of the EU, he did not
mention The Spinelli Project . Nevertheless, Fischer walked in Spinellis
footprints when he spoke about going from confederacy to federation.[2]

With confederacy is intended an association of states,  such as the EU so
far has been. Federation means  a federal state such as the US of America. 

Spinelli is the seminal figure of European Federalism. Why was his project
shelved?

His Leftist stance was incompatible with the prevailing spirit of Thatcher
and Reagan.

Originally a Communist, for which he was punished with 10 years in jail
and 6 years in exile on the islands Ponza and Ventotene, he broke with the
Communist Party in 1937, because of its Stalinism.  During winter and
spring 1941, while the armies of  Hitler were achieving one victory after
another,  Spinelli and his friend  Ernesto Rossi wrote a political program
"For a Free and United Europe" (The Manifesto of Ventotene). [3]

Who would believe today that the European Union was originally a Leftist
project?

After the war, Spinelli lived as a government counsel and researcher. In
1970 he was appointed  European Commissioner for industrial and research
policy.

Having finished his period on the Commission, Spinelli decided to run for
the European Parliament as an independent candidate on the list of the
Italian Communist Party. He was elected in the first direct elections to
the EP in 1979.

During the following years, one would often see him  in restaurant
Crocodile  in Strasbourg, where he continued to  explain why the European
federation is a necessary thing. 

The ideas of the "Crocodile Club" soon prevailed among  among the  members
of the European Parliament. By February 1984,  an overwhelming majority
was ready to vote for the federation.

For the Federalist Spinelli, the EU was primarily about a new and
progressive political system.  The integration of the markets was a
secondary development. 

The "F" word means reductions in national sovereignty to make room for a
peaceful, Cosmopolitan world order, and to move power downwards, which
means democratization.

When we compare the draft EU Treaty from February 1984 with the  Treaty
establishing a Constitution for Europe  of October 2004,  we have to ask:
What is important in a constitution?

It is important that the constitution be brief.  This is not a formality,
but a question of democracy, because the citizens are supposed to know
what it says. The 1984 draft finds room on 25 pages. The 2004 draft
occupies 350 pages.

The text of the constitution should also be general enough.  The values of
the state must be spelled out, but detailed descriptions of the policies,
or ideology, are not to be included. The 1984 draft  keeps to generalities
and it is ideologically neutral. The 2004 draft resembles a governmental
program, and the end result of its phrases about free and undistorted
competition and unrestricted capital movements is  ideological bias. 

The draft of 1984 does not even name the Atlantic Pact. The reason for
this is not a particular opinion about NATO, but state wisdom. The world
changes which is why a good constitution leaves the external relations of
the state to separate agreements. The draft of 2004 treats NATO as if it
were a European institution. 

Also of importance is the way the law is made and approved. Spinelli
thought that the European Parliament would act  as a constituent assembly.
This actually happened in 1984, but the national governments buried the
constitution of the European Parliament. The Single European Act, which
was elaborated by a commission and adopted by the governments a couple of
years later, is not a constitution, but an enlarged free trade
agreement.[4]

The draft constitution of 2004 was made by the European Convention (which
was established for the purpose by the governments). In France and the
Netherlands, where the draft was really debated among the citizens, it was
defeated in referendums held in May-June 2005.



The Federalist European Left grew out of the resistance movements of the
1940ies when Europe had to be freed from Nazism and the dictatorships. But
the old order was rapidly restored, this time under American hegemony, and
soon the Left became as disunited as Europe itself.[5]

The time has come for the Federalist Left to be born anew. The Left was
partly responsible for the defeat of the constitution of 2004. Well done,
but  the Left should come forth with an alternative to that Neoliberal
tract. It should make "a sober proposal to create a democratic European
power" (una sobria proposta di creare un potere democratico europeo ) .[6]

The  EU, which is  crossing the traditional geographical borders of Europe
should gain control over those "mad and unbound Leviathans" (Leviatani
impazziti e scatenati)[7] whereby Spinelli once meant the national states
of Europe and whereto we nowadays must add the pathological dictatorship
of the financial markets.

Reconstitute Spinelli's project, the constitution of 1984!


(The above text is a newspaper article by Mikael Böök, M.A., Finland.  May
be published with or without footnotes with permission from the author.
Comments are welcome. Versions in Finnish and Swedish appear around the
100th birthday of Altiero Spinelli on 31, August 2007.  Contact:
book at kaapeli.fi or +358 44 5511324. A PDF version of the article is found
at http://wiki.spinellisfootsteps.info/ )



FOOTNOTES

	[1] The French and English text of the 1984 draft treaty is found
at  http://www.spinellisfootsteps.info/
	[2] Fischer, Joschka: "From Confederacy to Federation: Thoughts on
the Finality of European Integration." Speech by Joschka Fischer at the
Humboldt University in Berlin, 12 May 2000.
http://www.cie.gov.pl/futurum.nsf/0/1289AFAAE84E5075C1256DA2003D1306	 
        [3] See Agustín José Menéndez (ed.): Altiero Spinelli - From
Ventotene to the European  Constitution. Oslo 2007.
http://www.reconproject.eu/projectweb/portalproject/Report1_Spinelli.html	
        [4] See Bieber, Jacqué and Weiler: An Ever Closer Union. A
critical analysis of the Draft Treaty establishing the European Union.
Luxembourg, 1985. Spinelli agreed to preface this book. He writes: "The
European Parliament is not comprised of impractical theorists and
revolutionaries. On the contrary, all the political views of the European
electorate are represented in its ranks. At the end of three years of
meetings and committed endeavour, the European Parliament has demonstrated
that it is capable of identifying, clearly and coherently, what Europe
most needs today." This book contains much stuff on how the 1984 draft was
received and refuted in the various EEC countries. More recent comment and
analysis is found in Burgess, Michael: Federalism and European Union: the
Building of Europe, 1950-2000. Routledge 2000.
	[5] "Adopted by a majority, although with many reservations on all
sides, the Spinelli project   appeared to a good number of deputies to be
a dangerous Utopia", reported the newspaper of the French Communists
(L'Humanité 16 September 1983). Actually, the French Communist deputies
were amongst those who did not support the Spinelli project. See Devlin,
Kevin: "Italian Communist Blueprint for European Unity". Radio Free Europe
27 September 1983.
http://files.osa.ceu.hu/holdings/300/8/3/text/135-4-197.shtml
	 [6] Quoted from an article Spinelli wrote in 1957 and which he
quotes in his autobiography Come ho cercato di diventare saggio  (Società
editrice il Mulino 1987),  p 309.
	[7] Ibidem.




Mikael Böök * book at kaapeli.fi * gsm +358(0)-44 5511 324 * 
http://www.kaapeli.fi/book/  * http://blogi.kaapeli.fi/book/